Questionable Answers
by ladyoftheknightley
Summary: The next generation of Weasleys find a box hidden away at the Burrow, and demand to know about what's inside it. Even though it means telling their children about the war, their parents agree, but not everyone is going to like the answers they're given...
1. A Discovery

**Disclaimer:** None of it is mine, of course. Everything Harry Potter related belongs to JK Rowling and Warner Bros, not me, and no profit is being made from this story.

* * *

Victoire surveyed the scene before her: two siblings, nine cousins and adopted cousin Teddy, all raring to go for the first inter-family Quidditch match since the eldest of them had returned back from Hogwarts. She cleared her throat. "Alright," she began. "There's thirteen of us here, so if I ref, we'll have enough for two teams of six, right?"

"How come you're reffing again?" James called to his cousin.

"_Because_," she said, rolling her eyes at him, "I can do magic outside of school now that I'm of age, and we need someone who can fix up an injury or two before Grandma Molly sees it. But I warn you, I will bat-boegy anyone who doesn't play fair," she added, mock-glaring at the terrible trio that consisted of James, Fred, and her brother Louis. Even though they had only just finished their second year, they had already perfected their reputation as the biggest troublemakers in the school, and the fake-innocent _who, me?_ looks that went with it.

"Hey, I can do magic outside of school too, you know!" Teddy Lupin exclaimed, "You know, having just graduated from Hogwarts last week and all..."

"Yeah, but only one of us can do magic well," Victoire retorted, as he stuck his tongue out at her and the others laughed.

"What shall we have on each team, a keeper, a seeker and two chasers and beaters apiece?" Roxanne asked, stretching languidly, and there were general nods of assent.

"Okay," Victoire said, "I'll pick the two captains out of the hat, then they're free to choose their team members, sound fair?" Once again, everyone nodded.

"Right then," she said, drawing a piece of parchment slowly out of her brother's baseball cap. "The captain of team _numero uno _is..." She paused dramatically as Teddy gave a drumroll on a tree stump. "Fred Weasley!"

The cousins cheered, as Fred stood up with a flourish, bowing and thanking them.

"And his rival, the captain of the second team will be...Lucy Weasley!" Once again, there were cheers and oohs from the assembled family members. Lucy, despite having only just completed her fourth year, was already captain of the Hufflepuff Quidditch team, and intended on playing professionally once she'd finished school.

"Think you can manage, Freddy?" Dominique teased.

"Against a girl?" Fred replied. "I should think so!" There were outraged gasps from his female cousins, which he ignored. "I'll play Beater," he announced, to nobody's surprise - it was what his father had done, after all.

"And I'll be Seeker," said Lucy, taking on the role she had at school, once again to no-one's surprise.

"Okay captains, pick your teams!" Victoire said, nodding at Fred to go first.

"As Keeper, I'll take Hugo," he said, and the nine year old jumped up excitedly, racing over to his older cousin's side. Despite his youth, he was tall, which gave him a good reach around the goalposts, and he had an uncanny ability to know where the quaffle was headed.

"I'll have Roxanne as Chaser," Lucy said, and she uncrossed her long, dark legs and got up to stand next to her. Roxanne was an excellent Chaser, but refused to try out for the Gryffindor team because practise was held between five and seven in the morning on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, by Molly's rather overzealous boyfriend, Evan Wood, who seemed to eat, breathe and sleep Quidditch, and she protested that she needed her beauty sleep far more than Gryffindor needed a Chaser.

"Ooh, is that how it is?" Fred cried, "Pitting sibling against sibling! In that case, Molly, you're mine!"

"But I'm rubbish!" Molly said.

"Yeah, I know," Fred said, "but you can be the other Beater, and my amazingness will make up for your rubbishness!" The others, including Molly, laughed.

"It's true," she said, as she made her way over to join them.

"James, Keeper?" Lucy asked, and the boy nodded.

"But of course!" he cried, coming to join them and sticking his tongue out good-naturedly at the opposing side.

"Careful, if the wind changes, you'll stick like that," Victoire cautioned, inwardly delighting in the banter surrounding her. When she'd attended Muggle primary school, picking teams for PE had been nothing more than a humiliating popularity contest and she'd hated it. This, however, was all good-natured fun, and like as not, when they next played, the teams would be completely different, so no lasting rivalries would form.

"Hmm," Fred was saying, furrowing his brow at the remaining cousins. "Albus, fancy being a seeker? I know Lucy's good, but you're _much_ better than her!" he said, and Albus raced over delightedly. It was nice of Fred, Victoire mused, to give the boy the position his father had played - they all knew how much he wanted to be like his Dad.

"Rose, beater?" Lucy asked, and the others burst out laughing.

"But I'm absolutely pants!" Rose said, bemusedly, joining in the laughter. It was well known in the family, that, like Molly, she much preferred books to brooms.

Lucy tapped the side of her nose. "Trust your captain," was all she said, and Rose shrugged, getting up to join the others.

"I'll take Dom as my first Chaser," Fred said, and the pretty blonde girl got up to join her team. Despite her long blonde hair, hot pink fingernails and baby blue sundress, the others did not underestimate her - like Lucy, she had just completed her fourth year, and, like her cousin, was on her house team, the only difference being the fact that she played for Gryffindor.

"And I'll take Lily as my second Beater," Lucy said, and Rose gave a sigh of relief. Despite her small frame, Lily was an excellent Beater, as her Uncle George had spent a few weeks last summer teaching her all his tips and tricks in order for her to beat her male cousins at the sport. After winning spectacularly, Fred, James and Louis's teasing about little girls playing had abruptly stopped.

Only Louis and Teddy were left by that point, and Fred quickly snapped up his housemate to play as his second Chaser, whilst Teddy went to play the same position on the opposing team. There was a slight squabble over brooms - there were plenty of old ones in the shed at the Burrow, some in excellent condition, and some barely able to get off the ground, but Victoire sorted it so that both teams had a mixture of both. "And I'll take your Firebolt, Luce," she said, holding out her hand for the one truly excellent broom in the mix. Her parents had brought it for her, she liked to say, as a bribe - she could have a fantastic broom, if she promised to finish school before heading off to play Quidditch. It was a price she was willing to pay, but she was extremely possessive over it.

"Just be careful when you're riding," she begged, handing it over reluctantly to her older cousin. "And don't go too near the trees with it. And make sure you've-"

"Lucy Weasley, I have been flying for a few years now," Victoire said, cutting her off with a smile. "I think I know how to ride a broom! Now, go get in your teams!"

"Don't worry, I won't tell her about the mishap with Ginny's old Nimbus 5000 when we were little," a voice whispered in her ear. "She might not be so keen to allow you to have the Firebolt if she knew..."

Victoire's cheeks flamed. "Do it and die, Lupin," she muttered, narrowing her eyes. The one good thing about being the eldest cousin was the fact that the others were much less likely to remember embarrassing stories about her from when she was younger...but Teddy always seemed to undermine that. He was so damn cocky...

"By the way," he added conversationally, as he helped her charm the Quaffle, Snitch and Bludger they'd be using. "I hear you finally finished things with that arse Peter Sneldon." Victoire stiffened. "Took you long enough. I mean-"

"Enough," she snarled at him, and he jumped back, surprised. For some reason, he and Victoire never seemed to approve of each other's choice of partner, and were always making snide remarks about them to each other, but she usually just brushed off the comments he made, as he did with her. This was new.

"I was only saying," he said, as he released the Quaffle. "I always thought he was a bit of a nonce, you know? And-"

"I really don't care what you just thought," Victoire snapped.

"Okay, sorry!" Teddy replied, holding up his hands in surrender. He studied her for a moment as she wrestled with the Bludger. "Look, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you or anything...if you want to talk about it, I'll try not to bite your head off or anything, and-"

"I'm fine, Ted," she said shortly, standing up. "We split, it's fine, the end. But I don't want to talk about anything, so just back off okay?"

Before he could say anything in response, Victoire released the Snitch and announced kick off in five seconds. "Get your butt over here, Lupin!" Lucy yelled at him, and he no choice but to go and join his teammates, resolving to talk to Victoire after the game.

For an hour or so, the match progressed smoothly. Victoire kept an eye on the younger and weaker players, to make sure the others weren't picking on them too much, but they generally played fair, and she hadn't had to intervene except when her brother accidentally got a nosebleed from a Bludger sent his way by Rose, who almost fell off her broom in horror when she saw what she had done. No amount of reassurance from any of them that that was what Quidditch was about could console her, and she spent the rest of the match tapping the Bludger incredibly gently with her bat away from anyone to whom it came near.

The score was eighty-seventy in favour of Fred's team when Lucy suddenly spotted the Snitch, and streaked towards the far end of the pitch, near the broomshed. Albus, guessing what she was up to, raced after her, and Fred, keen to help his Seeker, whacked the Bludger towards Lucy. She rolled over on her broom, dodging it neatly, so the ball kept on going, smashing through the roof of the shed. The two Seekers pulled up short, pointing to the hole in the roof. "It's gone through there," Lucy said. "The Snitch and the Bludger."

"I'll go fetch them, and repair the hole, then," Victoire said. "Time out whilst we do that?" The others nodded, and Albus offered to come help search for the Snitch.

"Need a hand with the Bludger?" Teddy asked, catching up with the two of them as they entered the shed. Victoire merely shrugged, and walked off to go and fix the hole in the roof.

"Are you two in a fight?" Albus asked, looking at Teddy with confusion. His godbrother just shrugged.

"I have no idea," he said, running his hands through his bright turquoise hair. Albus looked even more confused. "Here's a tip mate," Teddy said, glancing down at him. "Do not ever think you can understand women. They're bloody impossible. Gotcha!" he added, having found the Bludger.

"Can you see that snitch anywhere, Al?" Victoire called, having finished with the roof.

"No, I haven't," Albus began, looking around him. "I can't-oh wait!" He scurried off to the far end of the shed, and picked it up out of a box. "Oh," he added, as something fell out with it. He picked it up and turned it over.

"What'cha got there?" Teddy asked, climbing over to him. "Lumos," he added, lighting his wand and pointing it at the piece of paper Albus was holding.

It turned out to be a photo - a group of serious looking witches and wizards, some of whom he recognised as his godfather's family when they were younger, and there, in the corner, his mother, her hair changing from blue to pink. Teddy's unconsciously began to echo it.

"Gosh," Victoire breathed, peering over Teddy's shoulder and making him jump. "May I...?" She held out a hand and Albus passed it to her. She turned it over. Written in a hand she didn't recognise were the words 'the Order of the Phoenix, August 1995'. "What's the Order of the Phoenix?" she asked, but Teddy just shrugged.

"I don't know," Albus said. "It fell out of that box, there." Victoire went over to it, and began leafing through. "Oh, my..." she breathed.

"What is it?" Albus asked, crouching next to her.

"All these old photos...letters...what's this? 'Order of Merlin, First Class awarded to Mr Harry Potter'," she read. "Uncle George has one too...and Auntie Hermione...wow, and Dad too! I think they all do. And all this stuff...I think it's to do with the war. Come on."

She levitated the box. "Where are you going?" Teddy asked. He wanted desperately to look inside the box, but felt strangely apprehensive. Who knew what sort of information it might contain about his parents?

"About bloody time!" Fred said, as they reappeared from the broomshed, but Victoire waved him over.

"What's that?" Dominique asked, pointing to the box floating a few feet off the ground as she landed.

"Look at this photo Al found," Victoire said, passing it around.

"Merlin's pants, it's Dad!" Roxanne said, pointing at the photograph. "With both ears, and Uncle Fred!" Her brother took it from her, looking at his namesake eagerly.

"It's got our Dad in it too, before his face was all scarred," Louis said, looking at his father's features with interest. "Not Mum though..."

"Does that man have a wooden leg?" Lily asked, pointing at someone who was sat next to her Uncle Bill.

Lucy squinted. "I think so," she said. "And a glass eye, too." The man in the photo glared back at her.

"The Order of the Phoenix, August 1995," Rose read, twisting her head upside down to see the writing on the back. "What's that?"

Albus through his hands over his mouth in exaggerated shock. "What, something that Rosie doesn't know about?" he gasped, and Hugo laughed.

"Don't call me Rosie," his cousin snapped. "But I do read a lot, and I've never heard of an Order of the Phoenix. Do you think it has something to do with the war?"

"Must do, I suppose," Teddy said, reaching for the picture, which Molly handed to him. "They don't exactly look like they're there for a party, and the time scale fits..."

"Has anyone heard of the Order of the Phoenix?" James asked, looking around at his cousins. He'd been disappointed not to find his parents in the picture - but then, neither were Rose and Hugo's, or Molly and Lucy's.

"Well, we're going to be studying the war against Voldemort next year, in History of Magic," Victoire began. "So I've read a few things, but mostly they just tell us what we already know - Uncle Harry's Mum died to save him when he was a baby, and that helped to defeat Voldemort the first time around, then he came back a few years later and Uncle Harry killed him at the Battle at Hogwarts, where Ted's parents, George's twin and Professor Dumbledore died, and Dad was attacked, right?" The others nodded. "But I can't say I've ever heard of the Order of the Phoenix," she finished.

"Uncle Harry told me that my Dad was involved in some secret organisations during the war, but I always assumed they were to do with helping werewolves," Teddy said. "I guess the Order could be something to do with that - you know, Phoenix as a code name for werewolf, or something?"

James had pulled the first piece of parchment he came to out of the box. "This is from Sirius - that's Dad's godfather," he said. "It's to...it's to your Dad, actually!" he said, turning to Teddy.

"What does it say?" Lily asked, trying to read over her brother's shoulder.

"Stop bouncing and I'll tell you!" he said. "It's dated 17th May 1996. _Dear Remus, I've spoken to Harry but he's refusing to take up Occlumency with Snape again_ - what's Occlumency?"

"It's where you use magic to stop people reading your mind," Rose supplied helpfully.

"Right," James continued reading. "_...refusing to take up Occlumency with Snape again, not that I blame him, Snape's a slimey git_." Albus flinched slightly.

"Does he mean-" he whispered, but Fred shushed him.

"_He really does need those lessons though, and I'm completely out of ideas on how to persuade him to go back to them - maybe you could try? He still thinks of you as his teacher after all. Apparently, Dumbledore's got some important info for us at the meeting on the 20th, so Snape'll probably be there, and we should try to corner him - he's supposed to be the grown up after all. Let's see if we can't knock some sense into his thick head. Things are quiet here without you, I went to the Burrow for Sunday lunch but that was a tense affair - Bill brought that French girl he's seeing around, and Molly about had forty fits, you know how much she hates her. I can definitely see what he sees in her though, ha ha!_"

Louis, Dominique and Victoire exchanged glances. "Do you think that means Mum?" Louis asked.

"No, it'll be Dad's other French girlfriend," Dominique answered with a roll of her eyes. Louis opened his mouth to retaliate, but Victoire frowned.

"Go on, James."

"There's not much left," James admitted. "It just says: _speaking of which, you really should talk to Tonks again, and you know what I mean. Yours, Sirius._ Oh there's a PS too - _will Mr Moony be requiring the companionship of Mr Padfoot this full moon?_ What does all that mean?"

"Tonks was my mother," Teddy said. "And Moony and Padfoot are nicknames. The PS sounds like code though, so I don't know what that is..."

"Hey, look what I've found," Lucy called, pulling a file out of the box. "Letters from Hogwarts about Fred and Uncle George's detentions and stuff. Blimey, there's a lot in here!" She held up the folder, which was a couple of inches thick at least.

Dominique let out a whistle. "Wow, looks like the two of them could give you guys a run for your money," she said, nodding towards James, Fred and Louis. They laughed and preened theatrically.

"What's this?" Hugo asked, pulling out a bundle of wool from the box. He unfolded it.

"It's a Weasley jumper," Lily said, turning it over. "It's Uncle Percy's! It's got a P on it and Nana Molly always does them in blue for him..."

"She does," Molly agreed, frowning at the jumper. She sniffed it, and pulled away quickly, coughing. "Urgh, it smells like dust and mothballs. I wonder why he never wore it?" She looked over at her sister, who just shrugged.

"You guys, I think we should stop," Roxanne said, putting a hand on Rose's, who was just about to reach into the box. The others looked at her, confused.

"Don't you want to find out about our parents and the war and stuff?" Louis asked, surprised.

"Well yes, obviously," Roxanne said. "But this has clearly been put away for a reason, and it's not really polite to go snooping through other people's belongings. I mean, I'd kill you guys if you did that to me, and I don't even have anything to hide."

Victoire looked a bit guilty. "She has a point," she said. "After all, it is none of our business..."

"It is though," James cut in. "Alright, we shouldn't snoop, but I do want to know what happened and every time we ever ask, we're not given any details...I want to find out what happened to make all of them so sad and angry all the time, and this could be the only way to do it..."

"No," Roxanne said firmly, and James opened his mouth to argue more. "Here me out, okay? Dad's brother died. His twin. Every time someone asks him anything even remotely related to Fred - other Fred - he looks like he's going to cry. He does cry sometimes. I'm not sure I want to know what's making him that upset - well, I do want to know, but I want him to be the one to tell me. I think we should ask them to tell us what happened, but actually get them to tell us something real this time. But leave the box of stuff out of it for now."

Fred nodded. "I agree with Roxie," he said, and she flashed him a smile.

"But what do we do?" Rose asked. "Take the box and say we found it and want to know what's inside it?"

"I don't see why not," Teddy said. "It's not like we deliberately went snooping around to find it, we just came upon it by chance, and there's nothing wrong about being curious about the contents. We should ask them to tell us all about it, tonight, whilst we're all here."

"I think that's a good idea," Lucy, and everyone else nodded and murmured their agreement.

"So," Victoire said, as they replaced the few items in the box they'd taken out. "Shall we head back to the house and ask them now?"

* * *

**Author's Note:** In case it wasn't clear from the story, this is set the summer before the Epilogue. In my universe, that puts Al and Rose about to enter Year 1; James, Fred and Louis about to enter Year 3; Dominique and Lucy Year 5; Molly and Roxanne Year 6; Victoire Year 7; Teddy's just finished school and Lily and Hugo are both nine, so they've got a couple more years to go.

Also - I am aware that Victoire got a few facts wrong when discussing the final battle. She was meant to, don't worry!


	2. A Decision

**Disclaimer: **Not mine, of course.

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A frustrated silence fell in the Burrow's kitchen. Harry, Hermione, Bill, Audrey and Molly and Arthur Weasley were all gathered around the kitchen table, and George and Angelina's heads were visible in the fireplace. "I think," Arthur said, clearing his throat mildly, "it should be Harry's call. He was the one most involved, after all."

"Oh for Merlin's-" Harry snapped. "It's been nearly twenty years! How much longer do I have to keep saying I couldn't have done it without you guys for?"

"We know, Harry," Hermione said gently. "But you _were_ sort of...the key figure." Harry sighed.

Barely half an hour before, he had been sat with Hermione and Audrey, making light conversation with Molly as they waited for their children to finish their Quidditch game to take them home. Then, all twelve grandchildren - thirteen if Teddy was to be included - came into the kitchen with a box of things they had found, and solemnly declared that they wanted to know all about the war and what had happened, and they wanted to know now.

Molly had sent them out into the garden, putting various silencing charms on the doors and confiscating Fred's extendable ears, as Hermione went to fetch Arthur from the attic, Audrey to the bank to see if she could find Bill or Fleur, and Harry floo'd the joke shop.

"I just don't get what's brought it on all of a sudden like this, though," Angelina was saying now, breaking him out of his reverie.

"Just finding that box, I guess," George said. "Plus there's a sort of...pack mentality about it. One person decides they want to know something, gets everyone else all riled up, then they're all demanding to know exactly what went on and how. They're encouraging each other..."

"The thing is," Hermione said, trying to strike a delicate balance. Molly and George had been absolutely adamant that the children were to be told nothing, and she suspected Ron would agree with them. Harry didn't want to go into it, mostly because he hated everyone seeing him as a hero, but she felt that they were missing a vital point. "Correct me if I'm wrong, Bill, but Victoire's going to be continuing with History of Magic next year, right?"

Bill nodded. "Yeah, but that's never been a problem before, right? It's all goblin rebellions and stuff in that class, isn't it?"

"Seventh year is modern history," Hermione explained. "McGonagall came to me a couple of years after the war and asked how it should be taught. Obviously, it was going to start being a really sensitive subject ten or eleven years down the line, because there'd be kids in the class who lost parents and what have you, on both sides of the line. Plus, you know, it's a pretty grim topic. So we drew up the curriculum and said it should only be taught to seventh years, because not that many people take the class at N.E.W.T. level anyway, and they're of age and mature enough to handle it by that point. But if Victoire's taking it next year..."

"She's going to find out about everything," Bill finished for her. "I think we should tell them. I don't think finding out from a textbook is the best way to go about it, plus she might tell some of the others, and it becomes a bit like hearsay that way. Better that we give them the facts straight..."

"That's easy for you to say, but Victoire's of age now," George put in. "Roxanne won't be sixteen until the end of next month, and Fred's only thirteen!"

"Same age as my other two," Bill said, shrugging. "I think they're all mature enough to handle it..."

"Mature enough to handle what?" Ron asked. The others looked up, startled, as he and Ginny walked into the kitchen. "We bumped into each other when we apparated outside," he explained. "I came to see why you didn't have the kids back yet..." he added to Hermione.

"There's been a little...incident," Arthur said.

"What's happened?" Ginny asked, alarmed. Harry placed a hand reassuringly on his wife's, as she came to sit next to him.

"Nothing necessarily bad...yet," he began, before quickly explaining the afternoon's events.

"No," Ron said, as he finished. "Absolutely not. No. They're too young." Molly and George nodded along with him.

"Even if it meant finding out from a textbook?" Hermione asked, incredulously. "You know how much Rose reads, we can't exactly ban her from taking books out of the Hogwarts library... With the amount your Molly reads, and even Victoire," she added, nodding first to Audrey, then Bill, "I'm surprised it hasn't happened sooner. Even Teddy will read anything he can get his hands on if he thinks it's got information about his parents..."

"The thing is, Hermione," Angelina's head in the fireplace said, "I completely understand where you're coming from, I do. But my sister, in the war...she was taken, and she was tortured and she was killed. And I have no idea how I could even begin to explain that to my children. But it's not just my sister, it's Fred, it's Teddy's parents...it's _everything_ that happened. And I know that you, of all people, understand most of all the true horrors of what went on. I wouldn't dream of saying otherwise. But how, _how_ do you suggest we go about doing it?"

"That's my concern," Audrey said. "Molly will be seventeen at the beginning of September, of age, for Merlin's sake! And even though she'd be an adult...I can't think how I'd tell her the reality of what went on. In some ways...I know it's a cowardly thing to say, but if we let them find out from a textbook, and then answer any questions they may have, within reason, well...it's going to be more sanitized, isn't it?"

"I see your point, but Rita Skeeter wrote a book about the war! Rita Skeeter! Do you really want them reading the rubbish that that woman writes?" Hermione asked, skeptically.

"Hermione's right," Harry said with a heavy sigh of realization. "Not because of that cow - because of something worse. We keep tabs on the ex-Death Eaters, what they're up to, and such. Draco Malfoy went to buy a wand last week."

Ron, who worked in the Auror department as well and realized what Harry was getting at, paled. "He did," he confirmed. "For his son. Scorpius, is it? Something daft like that... Anyway, he's starting Hogwarts in the same year as Rosie and Al."

"I'm sure his father's told him lots of stories about the war," Harry said grimly. "Do we really want our kids' 'knowledge' of what happened coming from Draco sodding Malfoy?"

"But Harry, that's the point," Molly Weasley said. "You have to tell them all. Rose and Albus, they haven't even started school yet. Lily and Hugo, they're nine! And you'd have to tell them, as well. How on Earth are you going to tell your nine year old little girl about Voldemort? You can't. Maybe tell those who are of age, yes, but not the little ones."

"No," Ginny said, as Harry nodded heavily to what his mother-in-law was saying. He turned to her, surprised. "You remember all the stuff with the Order, in the summer before my fourth year, how you wouldn't let me listen directly to what was going on? I knew everything, of course - the others told me straight after the meetings. You think that won't happen with our kids?"

"Ginny, darling, I'd go back and do that again if I had to. And you were fourteen! Lily. Is. Nine," Molly said, emphasising her last three words greatly.

"Mum, I _know_," her daughter replied. "But I'm not suggesting we go out and give them every detail of how Voldemort _avada kedavra__'d_ everyone he killed. I think we should sit them all down, as a group, and tell them as one what happened, almost like a history lesson. This happened, then this, then this, then we won. Yes, you'd have to say that some bad things happened, like Remus and Tonks and F-Fred dying, but it's not like they don't already know that that happened."

"I agree with Ginny," Hermione said, and Bill nodded as well. "We'll tell them that they can ask questions as long as they accept that we might not answer all of them."

"I guess we could tell them that we don't want to answer the more difficult questions until they're of age..." George mused. "Sorry if that drops you in it a bit, Bill."

"Nah, it's okay," Bill said, waving a hand. "Vic's sensitive, she knows where to draw the line. Plus, you know, in my mind she's still five and I want to protect her from everything...but she's of age now. I can do many things, but I can't stop her growing up."

"Who's going to do the telling?" Harry asked, and they all looked at him as if he was stupid.

"You, obviously," Ron said. "We can put in bits here and there...but you're the main guy here, mate, and you know it."

"So it's really going to happen then?" he mused, as Ginny rested her head on his shoulder.

"If we do it together, it will help," his wife said.

"When are we going to do it? They think they're getting answers today, but..." Bill trailed off, waving a hand.

"Sunday," Molly said. "You're all coming round for Sunday lunch anyway, and the younger ones are less hyperactive with food inside of them. We need time to confirm that Percy and Fleur and Charlie are okay with us doing this, too, remember?"

Ginny smiled at her mother. "I do have one condition, though," she said.

"But this was all your idea?" Ron asked.

"Well, not _exactly_ my idea," she replied. "But anyway. If Lily or Hugo get too upset by what we tell them - or any of them, for that matter - I will take them out for a walk or something and they don't have to listen to it."

Molly returned her daughter's understanding smile.

-:-

"Lily, I will be up to read you a story in fifteen minutes," Ginny said to her daughter later that evening. "You need to leave Daddy and I in peace first though, okay? Go and put your pyjamas on and clean your teeth, and say goodnight to Daddy first."

"G'night Daddy!" the little girl replied, bouncing over to her father, pecking him on the cheek and dashing out of the living room to her bedroom upstairs.

Ginny gave a tired sigh and sank down into the sofa next to Harry. "Knut for 'em?"

"Huh?" Harry asked, rubbing the back of his head and causing his hair to stick up oddly.

"Knut for your thoughts?" Ginny asked again.

"I just...are we doing the right thing? By telling them?" he asked.

"Yes," Ginny said, without a moment's hesitation, and he looked up at her, startled. "We are - and I worked out why, earlier. If we don't tell them, and they read about you in one of Rita bloody Skeeter's books, they're going to start hero-worshipping you. Those books stick you out there as the Chosen One, the Boy Who Lived, the Saviour of the Wizarding World, all caps. And I'm not saying you're not those things, or were them, but now...you're just Dad. And to tell them, on your own terms...well, it's the easiest way to remain just Dad."

"You're right," he said, and gave a small laugh. "Of course."

"Of course," she agreed, snuggling into his arms. Their moment lasted a whole five seconds, before there was a crash and a yell from upstairs. Ginny sighed and unwound herself from Harry. "Okay. You take James and Al, and I'll go read Lily's story."

"What is it tonight, Muggle or Magical?" he asked, as they began to climb the stairs.

"Muggle, more's the pity," Ginny said. Harry glanced at her.

"I thought you liked the Muggle stories?" he asked.

"I do," his wife said, "but Lily only likes one - Cinderella. If I have to read about that _sodding_ glass slipper again, I'll stick it in Cinders somewhere where the sun does not shine!"

-:-

"I cannot stand living here any longer!" Lucy announced, slamming Molly's bedroom door closed behind her.

"Knocking is a thing that normal human beings do..." Molly said mildly, brushing her long, Weasley-red hair through.

"He is just completely unbelieveable!" her sister continued, throwing herself down on Molly's neatly made bed.

"Yeah, have a seat, why don't you?" Molly said, rolling her eyes and curling up in her desk chair as she continued to brush her hair.

"Honestly, I just...urghh!" Lucy gave a little scream of frustration, burying her face in the pillow and kicking her legs against the duvet.

Molly sighed. Clearly, her sister was not going to leave any time soon. "What's happened now?" she asked.

"Dad," Lucy spat, "has grounded me for the weekend because I haven't done my sodding Potions essay yet! It's the first week of the holidays for Merlin's sake!"

"Are you not even allowed to come to Grandma and Grandad's on Sunday?" Molly asked, surprised.

"No, I can go to that. But I'm not allowed to go to Mia Hatterstone's birthday party tomorrow night!" she said, sounding outraged.

"I thought you hated Mia Hatterstone?" Molly asked, putting away the quills and parchment that were lying on her desk.

"I do," Lucy said, as if it were obvious. "Which is why I _have_ to go to her party - everyone's going, and if she hooks up with Robert Finnegan...I will end her."

"Who's Robert Finnegan?" asked Molly, hanging a cardigan in her wadrobe.

"Oh honestly Molly, don't you know _anything_? Roger is only the hottest guy in fourth year, and we totally hooked up at the end of last year but he's sort of playing the field a bit, and he might end up with her, and then I-"

"Wait, so you're going out with someone who is hooking up with other girls?" Molly was now completely confused.

"Oh for Merlin's sake, Molls, just because you and Evan sodding Wood are going to get married doesn't mean we all have to have steady boyfriends from the age of fifteen!" Lucy snapped, rolling over to look at her sister.

"I'm sixteen," Molly said defensively, straightening out her framed photo of Evan on the desk, "and I'll be seventeen soon. And we're not getting married. Well, not until we're in our late twenties, anyway. And getting back on track - I'll help you with the Potions essay, if you want..."

"Thanks, but Dad's already said that you're not allowed to help me. Not that I need your help. I mean," she added hurriedly, looking at the hurt on her sister's face, "I'm capable of doing it myself, I understand the topic and whatnot. It's just that Dad seems to think I'm stupid."

"He doesn't think you're stupid!" Molly cried.

"Maybe not, but I'm not as clever as you," Lucy said dolefully. "And Dad's all about the brains..."

"Well, maybe I am better at you at the subjects I'm going to need to be a Healer," Molly said carefully. "But firstly, I have had an extra year's study of them; secondly, I actually do all my homework and spend my life reading up on my classes, which you are more than capable of doing if you want to; and thirdly, you are a million times better than I could ever hope to be at things like Quidditch."

"Yeah, yeah, I know," Lucy said, waving a hand. "I'm not jealous of you or anything. I just hate how you're blatantly the favourite."

"No," Molly said firmly, coming to sit next to her sister on the bed. "Our parents love us both the same, they don't-"

"Yeah, deep down they do, of course," Lucy said. "But you're Dad's favourite despite the fact that he loves us both equally and all that jazz. Look at your room! You've colour coded your freaking wardrobe, for Merlin's sake! And I love you for it, I do, but Molly, you're the _good_ daughter. The easy one. I'm the one who's room looks like it got hit by a _reducto_, the one who never does her homework on time, the one who'd rather fly than read...of course you're the one they prefer, 'cause you're not hard work like I am!"

"Hah, you think _I'm_ the good one?" Molly laughed, then lowered her voice. "You know last week, when you stayed at Dom's and Mum and Dad were at the Ministry until late at some function or another?" Her sister nodded. "Evan came over, up to my room. I didn't think he'd be able to get in - I thought Dad would've put some sort of charms on the door like at Hogwarts, but it was fine. Even though we've been dating since November, he doesn't think that I'm going to bring him up to my room..."

Lucy laughed. "Oh, poor Dad, so trusting! What did you guys even do up here anyway? Evan's sensible, he much prefers Quidditch to books, and there's none of that in here..."

"Oh, you know, this and that," Molly said, wiggling her eyebrows and flushing slightly.

Lucy's eyes widened. "In this bed?" she asked, jumping up suddenly. "Ew! Ewewewewew! Eeeeew!"

"Don't worry, I've changed the sheets," her sister muttered.

"I can't believe you guys are having sex," Lucy said, whispering the last two words.

"Well, I'll thank you to keep it to yourself," Molly said. "I'm the good one, remember?" she added with a wink.

"Does anyone else know?" Lucy asked.

"Roxie, because we're best friends, obviously," Molly said. "Although her reaction was rather similar to yours, really. And Vic, because I had to go and ask her for advice about...prevention things."

"Mum didn't give you the talk?" her sister asked.

"Well, yes, but that was years ago, and really...there were other things I wanted to ask too, that I couldn't ask Mum. Like what was normal, and did it hurt, and would I bleed, and-"

"If you don't stop right now, I will throw up," Lucy promised, covering her ears with her hands.

"Alright, alright," Molly said. "But in case you ever need to know anything, you can come and ask me."

"Thanks, but that's not going to be for ages yet," Lucy replied. "Wait, does this mean Victoire's...done what you guys did?"

"With Peter? Yeah, she did," Molly said. "But they've broken up now, obviously..."

"Why did they split?" Lucy asked, curious.

"Honestly?" Molly asked. "I have no idea. And I don't think she does either..."

-:-

"Your papa and I are 'eading off to do some shopping," Fleur said, on Saturday morning. "We'll be back een about an hour or so, _d'accord_?"

"_D'accord, maman_," Dominique replied, barely looking up from her magazine. Fleur smiled and dropped a kiss on her daughter's head. She ambled out of the living room, and Dominique waited a couple of minutes after hearing the telltale signs of the floo being used, before racing into the kitchen, and, finding it empty, hurtling up the first flight of stairs and into her brother's room.

"Wake up!" she chanted, jumping up and down on Louis's bed. "Wake up wake up wake up!"

Louis muttered something that, had his mother heard him, would've lead to a _scourgify_ of the mouth incident. "Whaddaya want, Dom?" he murmured, rolling over and burying his face in his pillow.

"It's eleven o'clock, you should be awake," Dominique trilled, throwing open the curtains and letting daylight stream into the room. She sniffed the air whilst doing so. Even though they'd been back from school for barely a week, the room still bore that musty, old socks smell that seemed to go everywhere with teenaged boys.

"Urngghh," Louis replied, articulately.

"How can you be like this?" Dominique cried, incredulously. She jumped back on to her brother's bed, and bounced on it a few more times for good measure. "Tomorrow we get to find out all that stuff about our parents! Aren't you excited?"

"I s'pose," Louis replied, still talking into his pillow. "But I don't think they'll tell us more than we already know. Plus it's all years in the past now, who even cares?" He groaned and rubbed sleep out of his eyes.

"I care," his sister replied, indignantly. "I want to know all about it - imagine, our parents actually did something exciting for once in their boring, working-in-the-bank lives. They never normally do anything cool! But this, this is proper exciting. And I completely want to know about this whole thing with Grandma Molly hating Mum. Do you think she and Dad were like Romeo and Juliet?"

"Dom," Louis yawned, drowning out his sister's babbling. "Go away. Can't you talk to Victoire about all this?" He closed his eyes again.

Dominique considered staying and annoying him, but decided against it. And he did have a point - Victoire was generally far more talkative than their brother even at the best of times, and Louis just woken was not his best.

She bounded up the second flight of stairs, to the third floor that contained her room, her sister's room, and the bathroom they shared. The door to Victoire's room was slightly ajar, and Dominique took this as an invitation to step right in.

Her sister, unlike her brother, had kept her room smelling fresh, and it was reasonably clean and tidy, although the bed was not made. Victoire was sat in the middle of it, wearing a pair of jeans and a plain lilac shirt, clutching a pillow. Ostensibly, she was looking at a pile of stuff overflowing from a box in the centre of the room, but in reality, she was staring off into space, clearly far, far away.

"Yoo hoo, Vicky, it's me, your favourite sister!" Dominique said, throwing herself into the old rocking chair in the corner.

"I'm your only sister," Victoire replied, a touch robotically. "And don't call me Vicky."

"Ah, I have missed your sweet and sunny disposition," Dominique replied, cheerfully.

"How? You only saw me last night, so that's not enough time to miss me," said Victoire, grumpily.

"Merlin's pants, what is _wrong_ with everyone this morning? You and Louis are as cheery as the Gringott's goblins this morning!" marvelled Dominique.

"What do you want, Nene?" Victoire asked, sighing tiredly.

"Don't call me Nene!" said Dominique, crossly. "And what I want is to know how you are not absolutely boucing off the walls with excitement like me at the fact that we finally get to know about everything that went on in the war?"

"Payback," Victoire muttered, "And I'm not that excited because they're mostly going to tell us about people dying, and that, of course, will be incredibly cheery, and also, it happened ages ago. It's not really...relevent now, is it?"

"How can you say that?" Dominique asked, incredulously. "And by the way, what's in that box you keep staring at?"

"Box has all of Peter's stuff that I need to decide what to do with, I can say that because every freaking year on my birthday someone gets upset and has to go off and cry because of something that happened in the war and I don't want that to have to happen tomorrow," she said, finally looking her sister in the eye.

"Fair enough, but they did agree to tell us, it's not like we forced them..." Dominique pointed out. "And aren't you just meant to burn your exes stuff? I'll help if you don't want to do it by magic!"

"Not just now, Dom," Victoire said. "And I'm just a bit worried about what we're going to find out tomorrow..."

"It'll be fine," her sister said, dismissing her fears. "Surely though, there must be one question that you wanted to ask about the war?"

"There is," Victoire said, sitting up decisively. "I want to ask Mum how she knew that Dad loved her for her and not because she was a Veela."

"That's not about the war, that's about Peter..." Dominique said softly, and Victoire wondered if the fact that the younger girl had managed to read her mind was because of her Veela psychicness or because she was her sister.

* * *

**Note: **I really appreciate all the reviews on the last chapter and would love some more for this one :-)


	3. A Gathering at The Burrow

**Disclaimer:** Still not mine, unfortunately. And I'm still really poor, so don't sue me, copyright holders!

* * *

"You are not leaving the house wearing that," Percy Weasley said, trying very hard to sound like an authoritative father.

"What's wrong with it?" Lucy asked, batting her eyelashes innocently.

"I...it's...you can't..." Percy spluttered indignantly. "Audrey, darling, look!" His wife studied their youngest's choice of clothing - barely there denim mini, coupled with a top which bore the missive 'Save a broom, ride a Qudditch player!'

"Lucy, you'll give your grandmother a conniption," her mother said gently. "Perhaps you could go and change into something a little more appropriate? Look at your sister..."

Lucy looked over at Molly, who hurriedly straightened her face. She was wearing a lemon yellow, short sleeved top with a draped neckline, tucked into a high-waisted, knee-length cream and green striped skirt, finished with a pair of white sandals. She looked very nice - the outfit highlighted her curves and the yellow of her top set off her Weasley red hair beautifully, but the overall effect was _far_ too fancy for Lucy, whose non-school-uniform wardrobe consisted of denim and tracksuits.

"It's not Mother I'm worried about," Percy grumbled, "it's all those reporters outside! Merlin only knows what they'll think of me if I let you go out dressed like that, and you know, they're going to stop and ask me what I think about the new regulations for travel into Diagon Alley, and then they'll want a picture of us all together, so-"

"It's okay, Daddy," Molly said, cutting off her father's stream of anxious chatter. "I've got something Lucy can wear." She dragged her protesting sister up the stairs. "We'll be back in five minutes!"

"I'm not wearing anything of yours," Lucy said mulishly. "Besides, I'm far too scrawny to fit into anything you own."

"Thanks for not calling me fat," Molly said, rolling her eyes and pulling her sister into her bedroom. "And anyway, I'm not doing this for you, I'm doing it for me. And Dad," she added, as an afterthought.

"Oh, for Merlin's sake, Molls, you're not fat!" Lucy sighed, sitting on the bed as Molly raked through the wardrobe. "And what do you mean, you're doing it for you?"

"I am _sick_ of being the one who is perfect all the time," Molly replied. "I want to rebel, do something which would make Dad be all 'Oh, Molly, why can't you be like your sister?' Hmm," she added, holding up a sleeveless blue dress. "What do you think?"

Lucy shook her head. "Absolutely not - the stripes on that will make me look like a deckchair!"

Molly sighed. "Also, think about it. You know that the reporters know we go out for lunch every Sunday. They're always camped out outside the house then, to ask Dad questions and get pictures of him being a nice family man and everything. We knew that would happen when we agreed that he'd run for Minister of Magic. We just have to play the game - besides, it's only whilst the election's on... And you really don't want that outfit plastered all over the Prophet, do you?"

"I like it!" Lucy said, defensively. "And what if he gets elected Minister of Magic?"

"Well...we'll cross that bridge when we come to it," her sister replied. "Election day is October 30th. It's not that long to survive, especially as we'll be back at school in September. Plus, we can at least kind of control when the reporters see us if we agree to do posed photos and whatnot on Sundays - if we didn't, they'd start trying to come up to us twenty-four seven, and that'd be horrible. Can you imagine nipping down to the village to buy some milk in your nightie and having someone thrust a camera in your face?"

"Urgh, I hate it when you're all reasonable like that," Lucy said, with a grin. "Hey, that one's not so bad," she said, pointing to a pretty white sundress with a pattern of Golden Snitches covering it. "In fact, I quite like it."

"You can keep it, if you want," Molly said magnanimously. "It'll look nice on you - it's from the Lavender by Lavender Brown line so it'll fit you whatever your shape is. I don't know how she charms the clothes, but it's so clever!"

"Thank you," Lucy smiled, stepping out of her clothes and into it. "And I know what you're going to say next...yes, I suppose I should be nicer to Dad - we did agree to him running for Minister and everything..."

"Yeah, you know he'd never have done this if we didn't say yes," Molly said, zipping up the back of the dress and watching as it magically shrank to fit Lucy's chest and hips. "You look nice. And please, _please_ try and be good today. I don't want any more comparisons, okay?"

"I suppose I do owe you one..." replied Lucy, as they made their way back downstairs.

-:-

The original Mrs Weasley watched from the window as her family appeared, little by little, in the grounds of the Burrow, Sunday roast momentarily forgotten. First came Ron and Hermione, apparating over by the old oak tree with Rose and Hugo. Despite being thirty-seven, they've aged well - from a distance, they could be fifteen again, spending the summer bickering in the grounds of the Burrow before heading back to Hogwarts. Only the presence of Rose and Hugo, the former going to Hogwarts herself in a few months, dispelled that myth.

As they walked towards the cottage, there was another series of pops, and Fleur appeared, one hand around Louis's, followed by Victoire, and then Dominique with Bill. Victoire, clad in a cream, knee-length dress, with a flower print around the hems and a pale blue belt cinching in her ridiculously slim waist, bore an uncanny resemblance to Fleur - her Veela genes shining through.

Dominique, wearing a pair of tiny denim shorts and red T shirt which just grazed the top of her belly button and fell off her left shoulder to reveal a black bra strap, resembled Fleur with her long, lithe figure and slivery blonde hair, but had her father's facial features. Indeed, she could see the girl's father eyeing her outfit choice with some distress, and had to smother a giggle - poor Bill, who had been such a player in his youth, could not bare the fact that boys might treat his daughter the way he had treated girls at that age. Payback, Molly thought, was very sweet - especially as Dominique seemed more than capable of taking care of herself around boys.

Louis loped behind his sisters, in an old pair of jeans and a Chuddley Cannons top, much to his father's chagrin and his Uncle Ron's delight. The boy looked so much like his father had at that age, it took Molly's breath away sometimes - he was a dead ringer for Bill, minus the scars and the ponytail.

They all arrived in the kitchen, and hellos and other pleasantries were exchanged as Charlie arrived. Hugo, who hero-worshipped his uncle, hurtled into his arms, demanding to know the latest news on a dragon Charlie had told him about last week. His sister had cornered Victoire (who, for all her pretty Veela looks, was looking very downcast today, and Molly made a mental note to find out why) and began questioning her on every little detail about Hogwarts, which her eldest grandchild answered obligingly.

Fleur was persuading Dominique to add a cardigan to her outfit, much to Bill's relief, as he half-listened to Hermione, who appeared to be quizzing him about funding loopholes at the bank. Ron and Louis were engaged in a lively conversation that Molly kept hearing snatches of, about the performance of the Cannons last season. Neither seemed terribly impressed.

Next to arrive were the Potters - Lily immediately hurtled towards her Grandfather who swung her up in his arms, even though he was, in Molly's opinion, far too old to do so. Albus hung around shyly on the edges of Rose and Victoire's conversation about Hogwarts, not asking any questions of his own, but not backing away from his eldest cousin's reassurances either, and James headed over to his partner-in-crime Louis, greeting him with a manly slap on the back. Ron and Harry took up a conversation about work, and Ginny wandered towards her mother.

"Keeping tabs on us, are you?" she asked, a smile playing about her lips.

"Of course not!" her mother replied, making a half-hearted show of slicing the carrots that had been sitting in the sink.

"Who're we missing then?" Ginny asked, joining in her mother's chopping.

"Percy, Audrey and the girls; George, Angelina, Roxanne and Fred; and Ted and Andromeda," Molly rattled off.

"Gotcha," Ginny said, grinning at her mother. "We're old enough that you don't have to do that now, you know..." Her mother scoffed slightly. "Is Andromeda coming, then?" she asked, slightly surprised. Though the woman was always welcome at the Burrow, she rarely accepted the invitation, unless it was a special occasion, like Christmas or someone's birthday.

"She wanted to be here, for the telling of it all," Molly sighed, frowning slightly at the vegetables.

"I can understand that," Ginny said.

"George is here," Molly said lightly, breaking the pensive spell that had settled over them. The four came to join them in the kitchen, Roxanne rushing over to Dominique and squealing over the events of some party or another with her cousin, and Fred joining James and Louis in the corner. Angelina went over to talk to Ginny about the Holyhead Harpies' new captain - Angelina seemed impressed, but Ginny wasn't sure she would live up to the hype.

"They've got that look about them," George said, coming over to his mother and nodding to his son and two nephews in the corner. "They'll be up to something later..."

"Oh, I know," Molly replied. George looked at her quizzically. "It's the same look you and Fred used to have all the time. But worse, now that there's three of them to keep an eye on...

"Do you think Fred would want us to tell them?" he asked, quickly.

"Honestly?" his mother asked. "He'd have told them already. Fred was never good at keeping secrets..."

George gave a small smile. "True, that..." He sighed, and Molly rested a hand on his arm for the briefest of moments, before a clattering over by the fireplace announced the arrival of Teddy, who had inherited his mother's lack of grace, and Andromeda.

"I've brought some of my asparagus," Andromeda said to Molly, by way of a hello. "Just steam it for twenty minutes or so with the greens, it'll be lovely."

"Oh, you didn't have to do that!" Molly protested.

"Nonsense, it's the least I can do," the other woman protested. "Cooking for..." she paused for a moment, adding up some numbers, "twenty seven is a challenge, and if I can help out in anyway..." she trailed off.

"Well, thank you very much, dear, I'm sure it will be delicious," Molly said, accepting with a kind smile. "I take it Harry has told you about...?"

Andromeda nodded. "Yes, he told me the plan," she said. "In all honesty, I'm glad it's going to be him doing the telling, not me. I try to tell Teddy as much as I can about his mother, but I try and leave the stuff about the war out, because it's just too difficult, you know?" Molly nodded. "He also said that he'd probably tell Ted some more stuff separately?"

"Yes," Molly nodded. "We're going to give them all the basic details as a group, mostly so they've got their facts straight and don't start hearing all sorts of wild stories from people at school, then we'll tell them...almost everything else once they're of age - but obviously, Ted and Victoire are already."

Andromeda sighed. "I hope Harry knows what he's doing..."

"It was the kids' idea," Molly explained. "They found a box of things in the broom shed the other day - honestly, I'd forgotten I'd even put it there. At the end of the war, I filled it with all sorts of stuff - letters, photographs, that kind of thing - so it wasn't lying around the house. We had a lot of Order papers here, and I didn't know if they'd be needed or not, in the future, but I didn't want them in my kitchen or what have you, straight after Fred's...the funeral. So I put them away, and quite honestly forgot about them - until the other day."

"It's understandable," Andromeda said. "I actually have Nymphadora's diaries at home - I did the same, packed them away in May of '98, then forgot about them until Harry told me about this. I'm going to give them to Teddy, I think, after Harry's spoken to him today. I still haven't read them myself..."

Molly smiled sympathetically. "I wonder how they'll take it? Ted and Victoire, I mean - they'll be getting the more grown up version of events, at any rate."

"I think they'll be okay," Andromeda said. "Ted's off to start his Auror training on the first of August - he has to be tough for that. And Victoire, she's mature for her age, you know? They both are - comes with being the eldest in a large group of cousins and siblings, doesn't it?"

Molly nodded. "You're right," she said. "Anyway, I'd better get back to this," she said, gesturing to the food in the kitchen. "No, no, I'm fine doing it by myself - you go out in the garden, get Arthur to fetch you a glass of wine or something. Merlin only knows we'll be needing one later!"

Andromeda drifted outside, and Molly returned to her scrubbing. Presently, two loud cracks made her look up, and she saw that Percy and his wife had arrived, each of them side-alonging one of their daughters. Even by Weasley standards, they were easy to read - dressed more formally than the rest of the family, they had clearly had to pose for photographs for the papers, after Percy had been subjected to yet more questions about his run for Minister for Magic.

Both he and his youngest daughter, Lucy, were striding towards the house, both wearing identical expressions of annoyance. Lucy had her mother's long brown hair, but other than that, the resemblance she bore to Percy was striking, even though she was a girl. Audrey rushed forward to soothe her husband, and Molly Junior, looked on with a faint air of amusement. She always found looking at Percy's eldest daughter more than a little disconcerting - she looked exactly like a younger, svelter version of herself. She often wondered if there wasn't some ancient magic somewhere that meant naming a child after someone made them resemble them...

-:-

Despite having been married to hot-tempered Fleur for nearly twenty years, Bill hadn't realised that it was possible for someone to levitate jugs of pumpkin juice angrily until he watched his eldest daughter do just that. "What's all that about?" Charlie's question made him jump.

"I have no idea," he sighed. "If you ever have children, don't have girls. They're impossible."

"You really have no idea?" Charlie asked, surprised. Bill started to shake his head, but a voice from behind cut across him.

"I do," Teddy said glumly.

"Oh?" Bill asked. Victoire had been listless ever since she had returned from Hogwarts, but that didn't explain her bad-temper that seemed to have come on since they'd arrived at the Burrow.

"We had a bit of a fight," Teddy explained, nervously scratching his ear. "She said something about Leah Roberts - that's a girl I used to date for a bit last year - and called her a bimbo and such. I sort of took exception and made some not-so-pleasant remarks about Peter..."

"Her boyfriend?" Bill asked. He wasn't sure what was preferable - being completely oblivious to his children's love lives, so he could pretend they didn't exist, or knowing that Victoire was at least being truthful with him when she told him where she was off to with her boyfriend.

"Ex," replied Teddy, and Bill's eyebrows rose. He hadn't known this - which wasn't entirely surprising - but he was also sure that Fleur wasn't aware of this development, although, she like him, was aware that something had been 'off' with their eldest daughter ever since she had returned from school.

Come to think of it, he _knew_ that Fleur didn't know - he remembered overhearing a conversation on Wednesday evening between his wife and daughter, where Victoire had played down her mother's concerns about her restlessness, saying she was just tired from the end of term and had had a fight with one of the girls she shared a dormitory with. Bill had known better to get involved in girl-dramas, but this news about the boyfriend was something else entirely. His fingers closed around the wand in his pocket, wanting more details from Teddy about the boyfriend's behaviour towards his daughter, but not wanting to admit to knowing nothing about her personal life. Fortunately for him, Charlie asked the question instead.

"What happened?"

"No idea," Teddy replied shrugging. "As far as I'm aware he didn't cheat on her and there was no big fight between them. But then, she's not likely to tell me anything, because I've always hated him."

"Why?" asked Charlie, curiously.

"Well, first off I was determined to dislike him on principle - I'd just started dating Leah when Victoire began seeing him, and she'd said some less than flattering things about Leah. Turned out, she was right about her and we ended up finishing with each other within the month, but I was determined to dislike Peter because she'd been so rude about Leah. Anyway, once I got to know him, I realised that he was a bit of a git, and we never really got on."

"What do you mean by 'a bit of a git'?" Bill asked, rather menacingly. Victoire had introduced him to Peter a couple of times over the Christmas and Easter holidays, but they hadn't been in the same room for more than ten minutes at a time - hardly long enough for him to form a decent opinion of the boy, although he did remember feeling an instant dislike towards him. Then again, this was probably a normal feeling for most fathers towards their daughters' boyfriends.

"Oh, he never beat her around or forced her to do anything, nothing like that," Teddy replied. "Just...I don't know, he gave me a bad feeling. Nothing I could put my finger on, but he always made me feel as though I should go and scrub myself clean after being near him. Anyway," he said, his tone suddenly becoming much lighter, "I'm supposed to be helping to move tables outside, so I guess I'd better get back to that before I get accused of gossipping like a woman!"

"I'll give you a hand," Bill offered, and the two headed inside.

"He doesn't have a clue, does he?" Ginny asked Charlie with a wry smile.

"Which one, Bill or Teddy?" Charlie replied, catching his sister's meaning immediately.

"Either," Ginny grinned.

"Should we say something?" her brother asked.

"Nah," she replied. "Ted's got to work it out for himself. Besides, that'd spoil all the fun..."

"Ten galleons says Bill is absolutely shocked when he finds out," Charlie said, glancing around furtively.

"Alright," Ginny replied. "And another ten says that Fleur isn't at all."

"You're on," said Charlie. "Do you reckon-"

"And what do you two think you're doing, standing around idly?" the sound of their mother's voice made them both jump guiltily. "Come on, come on, if you've got nothing to do, I've got some cutlery that needs polishing!"

Sheepishly, the two followed Molly inside, as Lily and Albus, who had overheard their Grandma's comments, sniggered quietly. "And you two can make yourselves useful, too!" she said suddenly, whirling round and suppressing a smile at their shocked faces. "Lily, go and tell your father that we need at least three more chairs out here, and if he's going to conjure some, they'd better not be those terrible wooden ones. Albus, I've got some goblets here that aren't going to carry themselves outside. Come on, spit spot!"

The two Potter children jumped to it, and Molly paused for a moment, smiling. They may be a mad lot, but they were _her_ mad lot.

* * *

**A/N:** 'Save a broom, ride a Quidditch player!' isn't something I came up with, of course, but it's still a motto worth living by, no? Next chapter is finally the 'big reveal', where they learn all about the war. Also, a review would be lovely, now that you've made it this far...


	4. A Tale and A Fight

**Disclaimer:** Definitely not.

* * *

After Molly's delicious roast had been devoured, Harry began his tale. He had considered making them wait until after the dishes had been cleared away, but Ginny had pointed out to him that if they waited any longer, James, Fred and Louis, who usually struggled to control themselves at the best of times, would explode so, with nods of approval from the other adults, he started to tell his story.

He began with the prophecy about his birth, Wormtail's betrayal of Lily and James, and his mother's death to save him - they already knew about this, but he felt that, should it be done, it should be done properly. He also wanted to be honest with them, acknowledging that death and other terrible things had happened, but glossing over the gory details for the sake of the younger ones.

With the help of Ron and Hermione, he gave a brief overview of the events of his first year, and how Voldemort had attempted to use the Philosopher's Stone to return, and then, this time with Ginny's assistance, he had spoken of the events of his second year. They had decided not to mention the Horcruxes until the children were of age, as they were just too horrible, so instead said that Voldemort had tried to possess Ginny by means of an enchanted diary. Mostly for Teddy's sake, he spoke at length of his third year, and the events with Remus and Sirius.

Fleur explained the Triwizard Tournament, much to Louis's disgust, as, at the age of thirteen, he could think of nothing more embarrassing than his mother being her school's champion. Harry took over to explain the final task, and how that had gone horribly wrong and led to Voldemort's return. He had toyed with the idea of not mentioning Cedric's death, but decided that he should in the end - he often got overlooked in the list of casualties, which Harry felt bad about, and he didn't want the kids to start thinking it had all been a big game.

Arthur, one of the few surviving members of the original Order of the Phoenix, explained what had happened immediately after Voldemort's return, when few officials had believed it to be true, and how they had had to keep their operations quiet. Harry, with help this time from Ron, Hermione and Ginny explained the events of the battle at the Ministry, at the end of his fifth year, and how this had helped show to the wizarding world that Voldemort was back.

As he had decided not to tell the children about the Horcruxes, the adults who had finished with school when Harry was in his sixth year spoke about the mounting fear that accompanied Voldemort's rise to power, and they finished with a brief description of the events of the first battle at Hogwarts, including Dumbledore's death at the hands of Snape, which elicited a few gasps, and Bill's mauling.

Harry then took over once more, explaining that he, Ron and Hermione had gone on the run after Voldemort's followers had attacked Bill and Fleur's wedding. He said that they had spent months on the run, looking for the items they needed to defeat Voldemort with, and had eventually broken into Gringotts to get one of them (James gaped with astonishment) which had lead to the second battle at Hogwarts when Voldemort found out, where Fred and Teddy's parents died, but Voldemort himself had ultimately perished.

"And that was about it," he said, reaching for a goblet of pumpkin juice to moisten his parched mouth. "Any questions?" he asked wryly. There was a pause, followed by all of the children talking at once.

"Alright, alright, one at a time," Ginny said, frowning them into quiet. "Rose first."

"What was it you needed to find to kill Voldemort? Surely there was just a spell you could find in a book and-" Hermione cut her daughter off.

"Voldemort used powerful dark magic to make himself harder to kill," she said, smoothly. "Obviously, it wasn't impossible for Harry to finish him off in the end, but the enchantments he used made things very difficult. We had to go searching for certain things to destroy the enchantments. No," she added as her daughter opened her mouth, "we're not going to tell you all the details get. You can hear about it when you're of age if you want, but you're too young at the moment." Rose looked disappointed, but Harry felt relieved. Horcruxes were just too vile a subject to talk about with underage wizards.

"Alright, who's next?" he asked, and Fred spoke up.

"What did the rest of you do when Uncle Harry was on the run?"

"Well, we tried carrying on as normal for as long as possible," Bill said. "It was important to resist Voldemort on all levels, so for instance, your Aunt Fleur and I worked in the bank, trying to get the goblins on our side, and Uncle Charlie, who was in Romania at the time, worked to spread the word that we needed help to foreign wizards who were sympathetic to our cause."

"But eventually, it was too dangerous to go to work," Arthur put in. "And we had to go into hiding towards the end. We were able to continue with the Order work, which mostly involved protecting muggles and muggleborns from attacks by Voldemort's followers."

"I don't understand," Lucy said. "If the Order was a secret organisation, and no one knew you were in it...and you, well all of you who are Weasleys by birth anyway, are purebloods, surely you weren't at that much risk? Not compared to a muggleborn like Mum or Auntie Hermione?"

Her Grandad gave a rather humourless laugh. "We were the biggest bunch of blood traitors out there," he said, sounding slightly proud of this. "Which made us just as bad as the muggleborns, if not worse. Plus, we were tainted by association with Harry, and Dumbledore to an extent."

"But I don't understand why everyone was so obsessed with the blood stuff," Hugo said, wrinkling his nose. "Mum is a muggleborn and Daddy's pureblood but she's much better than him at magic so why does it matter?" Ron spluttered indignantly as the other adults chuckled.

"Well, not all purebloods are obsessed with it," Hermione pointed out. "Your dad's family, for one; Harry's father's family and the Longbottoms are all examples of pureblood families that you know who couldn't care less about a person's blood status."

"And anyway, there's no substance to any claims that people who are muggleborn, half-blood or pureblood are any better at magic than any other group," said Bill. "It's like saying people with blue eyes are better at magic, or people who are left handed. It's complete nonsense."

"But some people chose to believe it because it made them feel better," Ginny said, scathingly. "There are some very bad people in the world who believe that they have a right to be superior to others, and other people should bow down to them because they're not 'equal' to them by an accident of birth. Complete nonsense of course - it's just playground bullying on a huge scale."

"But if not all purebloods believe that they're superior, and then you've got all the half-bloods and muggleborns and stuff," Dominique said, frowning. "Well, that's a really big proportion of the wizarding world. Why didn't they all just join up and defeat this Voldemort guy?"

"Well, there's a long answer and a short answer to that," Harry said. "The short answer is that people were afraid of what would happen to their families. It was far easier to turn a blind eye to a Death-one of Voldemort's followers' nastiness than to kick up a fuss about it and risk him hurting your family. He also used Unforgivable Curses, and made people who wouldn't ordinarily support him do bad things using the Imperius Curse, too."

"And, a lot of people just didn't want to believe he was back," Percy said, softly. "I myself was one of them. I was scared, afraid of what it would mean, so at first, I chose to side with the Ministry. They said that Harry and Dumbledore - who were leading the fight against Voldemort - were lying, and wanted to draw attention to themselves. I believed them, and so did a lot of people at first."

"But didn't that mean that you weren't very good fighter for the Order of the Phoenix?" his eldest daughter asked. He gave her a wan smile.

"I didn't join the Order," he said. "I moved out - ran away, really - and refused to believe the evidence that was piling up in front of my eyes."

"But he came back, in the end, and helped us to defeat him," George put in, noticing the way Molly was looking at her father - something halfway between horror and disgust was appearing on her face. "Lots of people did, in the end. But your Dad was pretty normal - hardly anyone believed us at first, and when they did, there were attacks happening up and down the country so it was dangerous to try and help."

"But what did you do if you were muggleborn or whatever?" Roxanne asked. "Surely you could do something to fight?"

"A lot of people fled zhe country," Fleur said. "Beel and I 'elped get a lot of people into France, and zhere were other witches and wizards who 'elped people travel across the world."

"I modified my parents' memories, and sent them to Australia, where they'd be safe," said Hermione. "Funnily enough, Audrey did the same thing, except she sent hers to Canada. We were able to bring them back at the end of the war, obviously, but it was much safer for them to be out of the country."

"Obviously, we couldn't do that with all the muggles in the country," Angelina put in. "At the time, I was training with the Falmouth Falcons, down in Cornwall. We were quite lucky, because no one on the team at all sympathised with Voldemort's cause, so we used to split up into various small groups and patrol the towns and villages at night, to protect the muggles. We caught a few of his followers, too!" she added, looking proud.

"And it's why we want you to all do Defense Against the Dark Arts up to N.E.W.T. level," Harry added. "Even if you end up doing a job that doesn't have any need for defensive spells, you never know when they might come in handy." The other adults nodded.

"I have a question," Louis said, somewhat hesitantly. Harry stiffened, anticipating another hard to answer question about the fighting, but nodded for his nephew to go ahead. "Um...in the box, we found a letter," he began, and Harry noticed the other children leaning forwards eagerly. He closed his eyes. They were bound to have found out something about the Horcruxes, and he'd tried so hard not to mention those... "It was from your godfather, to Teddy's Dad," Louis continued. Harry dreaded to think what Sirius, who had nearly gone mad during those long months cooped up in number 12, Grimmauld Place, would have written down. "It said something about...Grandma hating Mum?"

Louis had finished his question in a rush, clearly anxious about the response he was going to get, and so was surprised when all of the Weasleys, bar his mother and grandmother, burst out laughing. "Ohh, I'd forgotten about that!" Bill gasped, wiping a tear from his eye.

Fleur muttered something that sounded suspiciously like, "I 'ad not," and Molly looked a bit shamefaced.

"I...it's just...Mum, you weren't a spy for the other side, were you?" Louis asked, and his mother looked affronted.

"Of course I wasn't! 'Ow could you suggest such a theeng, I was never-" she exclaimed, indignantly.

"But why else would Grandma have hated you?" Dominique asked, for the question had been playing on her mind too, since they had found the letter. Their grandmother loved everyone...

"It was just a misunderstanding, of sorts," Molly grumbled.

"Grandma thought that your Mum was flighty and irresponsible and only with me for my good looks," Bill said, cheerfully. "And of course, she was right!" Fleur smacked him on the arm, but their children still looked confused. "It was just something that happened long ago that actually had nothing to do with the war. Don't worry about it."

"Yes, well, I think that's quite enough for today," Molly said, waving her wand and causing those nearest the table to duck as they were nearly hit with the plates and dishes that had been used for their lunch. "Why don't you all run along now, hmm?"

"Just...one more question," Albus said, looking pleadingly at his father, who nodded. "You always say that Divination is a load of bol-rubbish," he corrected, at Harry's frantic head shake as Ginny's narrowed her eyes at husband. "But Voldemort wanted to kill you because of a prophecy, so doesn't that make it...well, not rubbish?"

"Occasionally - very occasionally - a Seer will See something that is true," Harry said. "But even then, when they really are reading the future, things can still change. It is true, however, that most Divination_ is_ a load of rubbish, so I wouldn't get any ideas about taking it at school."

Albus nodded, and, after Molly had pointedly glared at the adults, a game of Quidditch was begun and several volunteers were roped in to help wash the dishes. It all seemed, Harry felt, to have gone quite well.

-:-

"I think that could've gone a lot worse, actually," Ron said, as he, Hermione, Harry and Ginny sat in the Potters' back garden much later that evening, drinking a bottle of wine.

"Yeah, it really did go quite well, didn't it?" Ginny agreed. "I think we managed to get across to them that it was a very serious thing without scaring them witless. I mean, look at those two," she nodded towards Hugo and Lily, who were sat on the lawn playing a very intense game of Gobstones. "My biggest fear was upsetting them, by telling them something truly awful, but my second biggest fear was them ending up hero-worshipping their parents like those stupid women who throw their knickers at you - _don't think I don't know about that Harry Potter because I do_ - when you walk down the street. And given that neither of those things have happened, I think we've done quite well."

Harry, who had curled into himself slightly and given Ron a helpless stare when Ginny had mentioned the knicker throwing incidents (he had thought she didn't know! And it wasn't like he encouraged it...but still it was definitely something a wife should not know about...), unfurled a bit. "It went well," he agreed. "And as long as no one has horrific nightmares about what we said tonight...I think we should definitely give ourselves a pat on the back."

"'Give ourselves a pat on the back'?" Ron repeated, grinning. Harry flushed slightly.

"It's...it's what they're always saying at Lily's Primary School..." he offered, feebly.

"Changing the subject slightly, what are you going to do about telling Teddy?" Hermione asked. "We agreed we'd tell them the whole story once they're of age, and I honestly do not think Andromeda is up to it..."

"Harry and I are going to go to Bill and Fleur's next week to tell him and Victoire," Ginny answered. "If we tell them together, it reduces the amount of talking we have to do, plus they'll have each other to mull it over with. And they'll probably want to talk about it - I mean, it's a pretty grim tale, isn't it?"

Hermione nodded. "Are you going to tell them everything?" she asked.

"Yes," Harry said. "Bill, Fleur and Dromeda have agreed, although she doesn't want to be there for the telling. Plus Victoire is going to learn all about it next year at school, and I think her parents would rather she knew a bit before, and Ted's going into the Aurors in August, so...well, if he can't handle it, I'm sorry, but he won't be able to handle what we do. But I'm sure he will be able to - he's a good kid."

"Well, let us know if you need backup, won't you?" Hermione said, before glancing at her watch. "Merlin's beard, it's nearly nine! We need to get those two home and in bed..."

"Yes, it's past Lily's bedtime, too," Ginny agreed. "You can go and fetch those two Ron, and Harry, you go and find where James, Al and Rose have got to. I think they went down to the shed so James could try to scare the others about the sorting ceremony..."

"Why us?" Ron said, indignantly. Telling his son it was time for bed was not a task he relished...

"Because someone has to stay here and finish this wine," Hermione said, smiling sweetly at him. "Another half glass, Ginny dearest?"

"Oh, if you insist!" her sister-in-law said, as they waved their husbands off.

-:-

"I cannot believe you," Molly spat, as soon as the front door was closed.

Molly getting angry at either of her parents was such a rare occurrence that Percy actually turned around, looking behind him to see if there was someone lurking in the hallway at whom his daughter was snarling. "M-me?" he stammered, turning around after seeing the empty hallway.

"You," she continued, glaring furiously at him. "You are a lying, evil-"

"Don't talk to your father like that!" Audrey cried, as Lucy snuck passed them into the kitchen, unnoticed.

"Mum," Molly said, taking a deep breath and calming herself down before talking to her mother. "With all due respect, I don't want to be rude to you and none of what I am going to say is directed at you, because as far as I'm aware, you had nothing to do with it. But you," she said, turning back to her father, "_you_. I can't believe what I was told today!"

"Molly, I understand that you are angry," Percy began soothingly. "You have every right to be, believe me, as do all my siblings and parents. What I did in the war, abandoning them, was terrible, it really was, but-"

"No!" Molly yelled, holding up a hand to halt him. "No. You're damn right it was terrible, it was pretty near unforgivable, actually. You left your family because you thought that by sucking up at the Ministry, you'd what...improve your job prospects? Have everyone want to be your friend? I don't know why, and I don't care why, either. But do you want to know what makes me really angry?"

Percy was so shocked at being spoken to like this by his eldest daughter that he just stuttered slightly, glancing at Audrey in the hope that she would say something to help, but she kept her eyes on Molly.

"When I went to Hogwarts, you told me about the importance of family, and about how some people would love or hate me because of my surname, but that that didn't matter, because the only thing that mattered was that I 'stayed true to my family'," she snapped. "And I did. In five years of school I've never received a detention, never lost so much as a single House Point! I waited before I had your approval before I told my boyfriend I would go out with him, and how many fifteen year olds do you think would do that, hmm?"

"I, I don't-"

"None, that's how many! But I didn't care because I respected you, I looked up to you, I thought you were right about family always coming first. God, I was wrong. And do you want to know the absolute worst part?"

Percy was beginning to get over his initial shock of being addressed this way by his daughter. "Now, wait just a minute young lady-" he began, sharply.

"I'll tell you," Molly said, cutting across him as her eyes flared in a manner that was scarily like her Aunt Ginny's. "Last night, I came downstairs, and I heard you and Mum talking, and you were saying something like 'once I'm Minister for Magic, we'll be able to pass this law and that law and whatever bloody law we like because I'm a Weasley, and everyone loves Weasleys'! You're going to use the achievements of your family, which you did _nothing_ to contribute to, to win the election. That's nepotism! And I'm sorry, but I have _never_ been so ashamed to be your daughter!" she finished, her chest heaving.

"Don't you dare!" Percy said, starting to feel really angry, but this time it was Audrey who cut across him.

"Darling, go and have a little walk around in the garden," she said, soothingly. Percy opened his mouth, but she pushed him firmly towards the kitchen. "Go on, just a little stroll to calm you down, okay?" Grudgingly, he headed off towards the garden. "And you, Molly, I think you should go to your room for a little while."

"Yes," Molly said, agreeing with her mother at a speed which surprised her. "Yes, I think I should definitely go to my room." She whirled around and began to climb the stairs, as Audrey massaged her temples. Honestly, she'd half-expected an outburst from Lucy - she and her father went at it at least three times a day, on the slightest provocation - but Molly? Never.

-:-

Lucy knocked tentatively on her sister's door, but got no response. At first, she had been amused by her sister getting angry - it happened so rarely, after all - but she'd overheard the things she'd said, and a feeling of dread had crept into her stomach. Then, her father had stormed through the kitchen, looking ashen, and she'd heard Molly's feet pounding the stairs.

She knocked again, this time calling out, "It's me, Lucy," as she did so. There was a crash from the inside of her sister's room, and she heard her swear under her breath, and blinked in surprise. "You can come in, if you must," Molly called, and Lucy opened the door and gasped in shock at the sight that met her.

Her sister's room, normally pristine, was covered in stuff - every surface was coated in books or clothes, which she was hurriedly stuffing into her school trunk. "Molly, what...?"

"I'm leaving," Molly replied, hurling two pairs of shoes and a cloak into the trunk, before turning to the books on her desk.

Lucy gave a strangled laugh. "Don't be ridiculous," she said.

"Won't need these two," Molly muttered, discarding The Standard Book of Spells Grade 1 and Quidditch Through The Ages. "But this lot are coming..." She stuffed a large pile of books into her trunk, and zipped it closed. "Yes, Lucy, I am. And I am so sorry, because it's nothing to do with you...in fact, you can come with me if you want!"

"Come with...Molly, you can't leave! I understand you're mad at Dad, I am too, but he made a mistake, and-"

"Yeah, maybe he did make a mistake," Molly said, as she opened her owl's cage and placed Mercury inside it gently. "Back then. But all these lies he's been telling for years...how he's used the achievements of Uncle Harry and Auntie Hermione and all of them to get Minister of Magic! That's not a mistake, that's despicable!"

"Well, he's not Minister of Magic yet, he's just running for election and anyway-"

"Luce," Molly said, pausing in her packing for a moment to look seriously at her. "I won't be able to take Boris with me."

"With you where?" Lucy asked fearfully.

"Wherever I go," Molly said, waving a hand impatiently. "He's a Pygmy Puff, you can't take them places, they don't like it. So I need you to do something very important for me, do you understand? I need you to promise me you'll look after him. He's very good, just needs feeding and cleaning out three times a week, and if you can talk to him a bit, he likes that, and-"

"Mum!" Lucy cried, running out of her sister's bedroom. Something about that moment - Molly passing control of her childhood pet to her - however daft it was, made her realise that her sister was serious. "_Mummy_!"

Audrey could not have apparated up the stairs faster than she ran up them, hearing the panic in her youngest child's voice. "What is it? Where does it hurt?"

"Molly's leaving!" Lucy yelled, waving her hands about wildly. "She's packed her bags and everything!"

"Go to your room," Audrey ordered, and for once, Lucy didn't argue - though she did leave her bedroom door open a crack. Muffled voices came from Molly's room for about five minutes; her mother had clearly cast a _muffliato_ so Lucy couldn't hear what was being said, but then Molly wrenched the door open, dragging her trunk behind her and headed down the stairs, whilst her mother pleaded with her to change her mind.

There was a final bump, as the trunk and Molly reached the bottom of the stairs, and Lucy pictured her whirling round to face their mother, hands on her hips. "I'm sorry, Mum, really I am," she said, her voice carrying up the stairs to Lucy. "Please believe me when I say it has nothing to do with you, nothing at all - it's Dad. I can't live here with him, I just can't."

There came the sound of the backdoor opening, and Molly dragging her trunk out into the garden. Lucy dived for her window, and saw Molly and her father, both gesticulating wildly on the lawn for a few moments - her sister had her back to her, still wearing the fancy outfit she had been wearing earlier in the day, her travelling cloak thrown over one shoulder, and owl's cage balanced on top of her trunk, but she had a clear view of her Dad, and he looked utterly distraught.

After a moment, Molly headed for the back gate, walking around the side of the house to the front, where the reporters camped out on the roadside. Lucy rushed out of her room, across the hallway and into her sister's room, which, amazingly, was almost as messy as hers. Molly had left her window open, and she rushed over to it, sticking her head outside and this time she could hear what was being said.

She wished she couldn't.

Molly, quite calmly, kept restating her desire to leave, but their father was crying, openly, for the first time ever. The sight made her feel sick. The two photographers who had remained exchanged glances, and held up their cameras, snapping pictures, and Lucy wished they would disappear, mostly for her father's sake, but also because she didn't want to be faced with her father's tears once again on the front of the _Daily Prophet_ tomorrow morning. "Mr Weasley, Mr Weasley, what's going on?" they were calling.

"Oh, go away, no comment, no comment!" Percy snapped, pushing them aside and trying to reach his daughter, begging her not to leave.

But Molly, without a backwards glance, stuck out her wand, and a huge black shape appeared and then disappeared, and when it left, her sister had gone. Lucy saw her mother come running down the path, her face streaked with tears too, and she knew that the right thing to do would be to go downstairs and comfort her parents, tell them it would be okay, that she would find Molly and bring her home.

But the right thing to do involved bravery and nerve, and there was a reason she wasn't a Gryffindor, and so she just buried her face in her sister's sheets, inhaling the smell of her and screwing up her eyes in an effort not to cry.

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**A/N:** Is Molly just overreacting? Or does Percy deserve a taste of his own medicine? Let me know in a review :-)


	5. A Series of Conversations

******Disclaimer: **JKR is Queen.

**Note:** A few people last time mentioned that they were disappointed in the way I wrote the kids being told, but that was semi-deliberate on my part - firstly, I wanted a way to summarise all of the books quickly, but secondly and most importantly, I'm going to be going much, much more in depth when Harry tells Teddy about the Horcrux hunt (next chapter), so I hope you stick around for that :-)

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"Welcome to the knight bus, emergency transport for the stranded witch or wizard. Just stick out your wand, step on board and we can take you anywhere you want to go-ooh, are you a Weasley?"

"Honestly, Stan, not every person with red hair is a Weasley, you know," said a voice from behind the man who was dressed in a very loud purple suit.

"Ee, I know Ern, but you-"

"I'm, um, Mia Hattenstone," Molly said, casting wildly around for the first name that jumped into her head and recalling the girl who was having a party that Lucy was banned from attending. She hoped that the real Mia Hattenstone wasn't on the bus already.

"Oh," said Stan, sounding disappointed. "I always liked them Weasleys. They was very forgiving after that little h'incident in the war, when I-"

"How much to Diagon Alley, please?" Molly asked, cutting across him. She did not want to hear anything more about the war that night, or possibly ever again.

"Nine sickles," Stan said. "We'll be there in free stops." He waited until she had paid him and sat down before shooting off, which made Molly fall backwards into her seat.

Her initial plan had been to take a room at the Leaky Cauldron overnight, but, on checking her purse and noticing the small amount of coins in it, she pursed her lips. Her distinct lack of Galleons meant that that plan was out of the window.

She couldn't turn up at the house of any of her family members - they'd just send her back to her parents' house and she wasn't going there. Her boyfriend's family, the Woods, would gladly have let her stay, but they'd gone on holiday to Spain for two weeks, and her best friend at Hogwarts, Grace, was a muggleborn whose parents would not have wanted the Knight Bus pulling up on their drive on a Sunday evening. If only there was some way of taking money out of her vault at Gringotts on a Sunday evening, then she'd be sorted...

A thought struck her. If she went to Roxanne and asked to borrow a few Galleons, she could afford to take a room in the Leaky overnight, then go to the bank early tomorrow morning and get enough money out to cover an extended stay at the pub and pay back her cousin. Roxanne even lived in Diagon Alley as well! It was an excellent plan.

Twenty minutes later, she was walking down Diagon Alley towards the back entrance of Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes in the pouring rain. The summer heat had broken over London, and a massive thunderstorm was raging. She'd thrown her cloak over her owl's cage to protect her from the hailstones, but Mercury hadn't taken too kindly to that and was hooting indignantly.

She picked her way over cobblestones, wishing she'd thought to change before leaving. Her top had gone completely see through, and the strappy sandals were not good for walking along the slippery, bumpy road, but she finally made it to the store, knocking rapidly on the rear entrance. "Can one of you get that, please?" she heard her Uncle George call. "It'll just be the delivery guy with the extra Billywig wings!" She heard footsteps coming towards the door, and prayed that it would be Roxanne who opened the door and not Fred.

She should have known, however, that luck was not on her side today.

"It's not the Billywigs man," Fred called over his shoulder by way of greeting as he pulled open the door. "Hi. What do you want?"

Molly stepped inside slightly, dripping water onto the floor of the store room and trying not to dislodge any of the boxes that were stacked high around her. Thirteen year old Fred stared at her, curiously. "Um...is Roxanne home?" she asked, hopefully.

"Roxie!" Fred yelled up the stairs, and there was a shuffling sound from above. "Is it raining?" he asked cheekily, eyeing Molly's hair, which was plastered to her face and neck.

"Not now, Fred," she replied tiredly, and he rolled his eyes at her in response.

"Well sorry," he said, just as his Dad came into the storeroom from the shop.

"Molly?" George asked, looking incredulously at his niece's sopping wet frame. "Is everything alright?"

Roxanne appeared at the top of the stairs before she could answer. "What's going on?" she asked, taking in the scene before her.

"Why've you got all your things with you? Did you run away?" Fred asked, sounding delighted at the thought. Molly looked up, met Roxanne's concerned eyes, and burst into tears.

Fifteen minutes later, she was sat up in the cozy flat above the store, wearing a pair of Roxanne's pyjamas and drinking the tea her Aunt Angelina had made her. "Now, love, it's not that we have any objections to you being here," the aforementioned aunt said, once Molly had calmed down sufficiently, "but is everything alright?"

"I...Dad and I had an argument. A big one," Molly confessed.

"Did he throw you out?"

"Fred!" exclaimed his mother, and Roxanne squeezed Molly's shoulders tightly, glaring at her brother.

"Go and wait in your room, please," George said, and, after a very insistent look from his father, he got up and left for his room, grumbling under his breath. "Molly, what's going on?"

"Like I said, we argued. About things to do with the war," Molly said, stiffly. "And I-I don't want to live with him anymore. Dad, I mean. So I left." The other three exchanged glances. "I'm hoping to get a room at the Leaky Cauldron but I don't have enough money on me, so I was wondering if Roxie would loan me some cash until I can go to the bank tomorrow and get enough Galleons out to pay my rent. And pay you back, of course," she added, with a nod towards her cousin.

"Now don't be ridiculous," Angelina said. "You can stay here with us! A young girl on her own in a hotel, even a reputable one like the Leaky, isn't a good idea..."

"I'm nearly of age!" Molly said, "And anyway, I don't want to be a bother, I'd just get in the way..."

"Nonsense," Angelina said, firmly. "I know you and Roxie had plans to have a sleepover later this week anyway, and when have you ever been a bother around here? You're far better behaved than either of my children..."

"Oi!"

"You know it's true, dear."

"Well, thank you very much, Auntie Angie," said Molly, "but I'll only be here for one day, then I'll be out of your hair for good, I promise, I'll go to the Leaky and-"

"Molly, how about this," George interrupted. "Stay with us tonight, that's fine, and then we'll try and sort everything out in the morning. I'm sure a good night's sleep will do you and your Dad the world of good, but if not, you're welcome to stay here a little longer, okay?"

"If you're sure..."

"Of course I am," and Angelina and Roxanne nodded vigorously too. "My only condition is that you write and let your parents know where you're staying tonight. Just a quick note will do, but they'll be going out of their minds with worry, which isn't fair."

Molly wrote the note (addressing it just to her mother and sister), and allowed Roxanne to take her into her bedroom to paint her fingernails in order to "take her mind off things". Her uncle studied the cursory note, and added a quick explanation of his own to his niece's, before sending the family owl out with it.

"Do you think she'll be okay?" Angelina asked worriedly, as they watched the bird fly away.

George nodded, wrapping an arm around her waist. "I think this is more serious than she's willing to let on. But I have a plan."

"Oh do you, Mr. Weasley?"

"When don't I?"

"Hardly ever, but when do they ever work?"

"Ooh, you minx! But don't worry, this is one of my better ones..."

-:-

Fleur stole down the stairs at half one in the morning, wand lighting the way. Victoire was yet to go to bed, and, though she wasn't making much noise downstairs, the fact that she wasn't in her room meant that her mother just couldn't relax and go to sleep. If it had been one night, Fleur might have left it, but it was nearly a week and a half since Victoire had finished school for the year, and on every one of those days, she'd moped around the house, day and night.

Fleur had hoped that the events of today - or yesterday, as it was now - lunchtime would have given her something to think about rather than whatever it was that was causing her to droop around (like a wet weekend, as her mother-in-law was fond of saying), but apparently not. Clearly, something was up - she didn't believe the story she'd been spun about a falling out with two girls named Alice and Maria, mostly because she'd never heard of Alice and Maria before, and they had supposedly lived in Victoire's dormitory for six years - and she was determined to find out what it was.

"Victoire? Are you not ready for bed yet?"

"Sorry, _Maman_," Victoire said, looking up from the full cup of tea she'd been staring morosely into. "Did I make too much noise?"

Fleur shook her head. "Victoire, what is going on? You 'ave been like zhis since you got back from school, and none of us are going to get any sleep until you get eet off your chest..."

"I'm fine," Victoire said, taking a sip from her tea, then pulling a face once she realised it had gone cold. Her mother frowned for a moment, before pulling two glasses out of a cupboard and summoning a bottle of firewhiskey. She poured a generous measure into both glasses and pushed one towards her daughter. Victoire looked surprised for a moment, but took it, relishing the burning sensation that accompanied each sip. "What was it like?" she asked suddenly. "Being school champion?"

"You mean about completing zhe tasks?" Fleur enquired.

"No," she clarified, "though when Louis does bring his first girlfriend home, I want you to tell your dragon fighting story again, because he will be _so_ embarassed by it." Fleur laughed. "I meant like...what was it like being the person who had to represent the school? The number one Beauxbatons pupil or whatever you want to call it."

"Well," Fleur said, considering. "I zuppose it was a great honour. Zhere is no way of telling 'oo zhe Goblet chooses - zhe tampering which caused Uncle 'Arry to be chosen was very powerful dark magic. Eet normally chooses zhe pupil 'oo ees not just brave and strong but also clever and wise - for zhe tasks, you cannot just go een and throw about your muscle, you 'ave to be clever and zhink about what you are going to do. Zo it was a very great honour to be told zhat I was all of zhose zhings."

Victoire nodded. "Where you ever scared?" she asked.

"Before zee first task, _non_. My 'eadteacher let me know eet would be dragons - we all knew, eet was not zuch a beeg deal - and I am not afraid of dragons. I knew eet would be tough, a challenge, _oui_, but I was not afraid. Nor was I afraid as zuch for zee third task - we were told ahead of time what we would encounter and I 'ad ages to practise my charms and zuch, although zhey were pretty good already. Of course, eet did not go to plan, but zhat was out of my control..." She paused for a moment, a faraway look on her face. "Zee second task, zhough..."

"That was the one in the water?" asked Victoire, and her mother nodded, taking a slow drink of firewhiskey before she continued.

"Zhe zhing zhat was most dear to us was taken, placed in zhe bottom of the lake, and we 'ad an hour to retrieve eet, or we were told eet would be lost forever. Of course, zhey would not 'ave let that 'appen, but I was not zhinking straight at zhe time. Gabrielle was taken, you see, she was what was 'idden at zhe bottom of zhe lake. And I panicked zho much, I could not cast my spells properly, I was attacked by zhe grindylow and I couldn't zhink 'ow to fend 'im off...I panicked. I 'ad to drop out and I was zho scared..." Again, she took a big sip of her drink.

"But nothing would have happened to Auntie Gabrielle, would it?" Victoire asked uncertainly.

"No, of course not," Fleur said. "But I felt zho responsible, and it just affected me... You are like me, _ma cherie_, an excellent witch - I was top of my class every year, my spellwork ees well above average, just like yours. But I am too easily ruled by my emotions - I became zho overwhelmed with fear, I could not think straight. You are not zho much like these, and you are a better witch for eet."

"I don't know," Victoire said. "If someone was threatening Dom or Lou...I'd like to say I'd be straight in there with my wand to defend them to the death, but there is a part of me that's scared I'd just shut down out of fear. I'm not a Gryffindor, after all..."

Fleur made a noise in her throat. "I like 'Ogwarts, but zee Beauxbatons 'ouse system is much better - loyalty to zee school ees more important than loyalty to your 'ouse, and zho you do not get students defining themselves by just their 'ouse's characteristics. You do not 'ave to be a Gryffindor to be brave, Victoire." She paused for a moment. "Also, 'Ogwarts ees always far too cold in zhe winter."

"I don't mind that," Victoire said. "And frankly, right now, I'd love to be in the grip of a Hogwarts winter..."

"Eet ees rather warm," Fleur agreed. "Ees zhe 'eat what ees keeping you awake? I can show you a cooling charm..."

"It's not the heat," said her daughter, staring into her half full glass.

"Eet ees not what we told you about zhe war?" Fleur asked, when she didn't elaborate further. "Because eet was terrible, yes, but eet ees long since over..."

Victoire gave a short, humourless laugh. "I'm so bloody self-centred," she said, almost to herself. "I'm more upset about a stupid boy than what you told me today...I'm so shallow."

"Zhe shoe pinces zhe one 'oo wears eet, as Grandma Molly always says..." Fleur said, trying to inject some lightness into the conversation.

"Yes, but the war...that was serious. Like, seriously serious. Literal life and death. And here I am being kept awake because I _broke up with my boyfriend_," said Victoire disgustedly.

"My dear," Fleur began softly, reaching out an arm to her daughter, but she shrugged backwards, so her mother couldn't reach her.

"I loved him," she continued. "And I thought he loved me, I really did. But then I realised that all he loved was the idea of dating a Veela. He didn't care about me, all he cared about was this stupid, stupid Veela thing. I _hate_ it." A tear slipped out of her eye, and this time, when her mother reached for her, she let her put her arms around her.

"Eet will get easier," Fleur murmured soothingly. "You will find a boy who does not care about zhe Veela genes."

"I don't even want true love, or anything like that," Victoire hiccupped. "Right now, I'd settle for someone who liked me because I like History of Magic or am good at Charms or...or...or was born on a Tuesday! Stupid little things like that. But every single boy I know stares at me and wants to be my boyfriend just because of this Veela thing and I hate it!"

"Not every boy, surely?" Fleur asked.

"Well, the ones related to me don't," Victoire allowed. "And Ted. But he may as well be related to me."

Fleur gave a small smile, grateful that her daughter's head was buried in her lap and so couldn't see her face. "Are you sure?" she asked, but Victoire didn't hear and carried on regardless.

"I really thought that Peter was different," she sniffed. "I honestly did. But then I heard him boasting to his friends that 'whatever else he did in life, he could at least say that he'd gotten with a Veela, so his life wasn't a complete waste'. Those were his exact words. Who even says something like that?"

"Many boys are distracted by what we have," Fleur said, after some consideration. "'E won't be zhe first and 'e certainly won't be zhe last. But eet doesn't matter - you can 'ave fun with boys like that, eet does not 'ave to be serious. And one day, you will find someone 'oo truly doesn't care, and zhat is when you will know."

"Know what?"

"Zhat zhis ees zhe boy you will marry." Victoire laughed. "You may scoff now, because you are sad, and because teenaged boys are usually 'orrible. But eet will 'appen. For me, eet did not 'appen whilst I was een school. Een zhe lake, zhe others old enough to know a little of love, Cedric and Viktor, zhey 'ad to fetch zheir girlfriends. But I 'ad to fetch my sister, because she was the only one 'oo I could not live without. For many months, I zhought zhat was a judgement on me - zhat I could not love boys 'ow zhey deserved to be loved. But eet wasn't until I met your father zhat I realised eet was not me 'oo could not love boys, eet was boys 'oo could not love _me_ properly. I did not know real love - romantic love - until I met 'im, but eet was worth zhe wait, I promise."

"Well, I hope this mythical boy who loves me for who I am turns up sooner rather than later, there's only so much heartache I can take..." Victoire said wanly, but she managed a small smile and sat up.

Fleur took a final drink from her glass of firewhiskey. "Zhey are often closer zhan you might first zhink..." she said, and Victoire looked at her questioningly. "Do not stay up too much later," was all Fleur said. "And don't drink any more of zhat. One glass ees enough!"

-:-

"Charlie!" Hugo rushed towards his uncle, who had just stepped out of the floo, breakfast temporarily forgotten.

"Hello, Uncle Charlie, what are you doing here?" Rose asked, looking up from her cornflakes in surprise.

"I've come to look after Hugo for the day," her uncle replied, and Hugo's face lit up. "Don't tell your mother, but I thought we might go and look at some dragons later..." Hugo nodded conspiratorially in response to this proclamation.

"Not me?" Rose asked, trying not to sound too disappointed. Not that she needed a babysitter, of course, at the grand old age of eleven...

"Not you," came her father's voice from behind her. "We - Mum as well - have some important things to do today." His daughter frowned, trying to think what they could be. "We need to get your things from Hogwarts!" finished Ron, and Rose squealed with delight. "Go and get dressed, we'll be off soon."

Rose didn't need telling twice, and shot off up the stairs. Hugo was telling his uncle something, and very forcefully leading him out into the garden, so Charlie shrugged apologetically at Ron and nodded towards his nephew, who was insistent that he come and view some possible dragon footprints in Hermione's flowerbeds (Ron suspected Crookshanks was the real culprit).

"I just ran into a small hurricane on the landing - I take it you told her then?"

Ron turned, and saw his wife smiling at him. "I may have done, yes," he replied. "Do you have the list of things we need to get?"

"Right here," Hermione said, waving a piece of parchment around. "Now, Angelina gave us that winter cloak that Roxanne grew out of too quickly - she barely got three months wear out of it, so we don't need to bother getting one of those. And I've still got quite a few of my first year textbooks, so-"

"No," Ron cut in, and Hermione looked up, confused. "Sorry. It's just...when I went to school, I never had anything new. Even my rat was second hand! I want our kids to have everything new - I know it sounds silly, but it's true. We can donate the cloak and the books and whatever to the school, they always need them for families who can't afford to buy their kids' stuff. I know: I was one of them. And we can afford to buy Rosie all new things so...think of it as helping someone else out."

"If it means that much to you, we'll buy her everything that she needs," Hermione said. "And you're right about donating the stuff to the school - they have more use for it than we do. But just promise me you'll let me give her one thing second hand?"

"What is it?" asked Ron.

"_Hogwarts: A History_," Hermione grinned.

"Oh, definitely," her husband agreed. "Then she can be the second person in the whole world to have read that book!"

-:-

Molly awoke early, and made her way into the kitchen-cum-living room of her Aunt and Uncle's flat before either of her cousins woke up. "Help yourself to some toast," George said, on seeing her hovering in the doorway. "I'm just going to see Angie off - she's going down to the Quidditch ground in Falmouth today - then we can have a little chat, okay?"

Molly nodded her assent, and sat down at the table, reaching for the paper. Flipping through it, she found nothing of interest until she reached the society pages. Cringing, she read the brief caption beneath a photo of her father chasing her down the road. "_Even running for Minister of Magic doesn't mean you're immune to teenage strops! Election candidate Percy Weasley struggles with teen attitude just like the rest of us_!"

If she'd needed any other proof that yesterday's events were real, she had it: it was even in the bloody _Daily Prophet_!

"Righto then, Molly, let's get you sorted," her uncle reappeared and cut off her musings.

"You're not going to send me back are you?" she said immediately. "I mean, I understand if you don't want me staying with you, but please don't make me go back to him or-"

"I actually have a job offer for you," George said.

"I...what?"

"Am I right in saying that you don't want to see your Dad after your argument yesterday?" he asked, and Molly nodded. "So you need a place to stay?" Again, she nodded. "Well, I need an assistant in the shop for the summer, and I can't use Roxanne or Fred because you have to be over sixteen to work the sort of hours I need. But you _are_ over sixteen, and so you could work there during the day, and stay with us overnight, if you wanted? Earn your keep, so to speak."

"Are you serious?" Molly gasped. "I could stay here all summer?"

"On two conditions," George replied. "Firstly, that you tell me what happened between you and your Dad. Not necessarily right now, but soon, okay? And secondly, your parents have to agree to it. Sound fair?"

She nodded. "And I promise, I'll be the hardest worker you've ever had, I really will, and I can't thank you enough for-"

"On that note, you need to get dressed," he cut across her. "We open in half an hour!"

-:-

Rose peered rather nervously around the door of Ollivander's wand store, but followed her mother in anyway. The incredibly old looking man behind the counter looked up, and snapped at the three of them to come closer so he could see who they were. Rose shrank back slightly at his irritable tone, but as soon as he saw who had entered his shop, his face lit up.

"Mr Weasley! Miss Granger! Or Mrs Weasley now, I suppose. It's a pleasure to see you again! What can I do for you? You know, after the...events of yesteryear, I'm more than happy to-"

"Actually, Mr. Ollivander, we're here to get Rose a wand," Hermione said, her tone polite, but shaking her head firmly at him to cut off the end of his sentence over the top of her daughter's head. Fortunately, he got the message.

"Ah, off to join Hogwarts in September, are we?" he asked, peering down at her.

She swallowed slightly, but nodded.

"Good, good," he muttered distractedly. "Now, where did I...ah!" He flicked his own wand, and soon a measuring tape was whizzing around Rose's body, and she tried not to feel too alarmed (which was difficult, when the tape was measuring the distance between her nostrils). "I remember when your parents came in, oh, like it was yesterday! Your mother, oh, she was difficult! I had to turn the place inside out before we found the right one - ten and three quater inches, vine with dragon heart, am I right?"

Hermione nodded. "And a truly excellent wand it has been, too," she said.

"Well naturally, it is a wand from my store after all!" Mr. Ollivander said, sounding slightly cross. "Your father, on the other hand, was a much easier match. Fourteen inches, willow with a unicorn hair, correct?" Ron nodded.

"Only took two tries for me to get it," he said.

"Well, you always were much simpler than me, dear," Hermione teased, and Rose giggled.

"Now, let's see how you get on with this!" Mr. Ollivander passed her a wand, and she immediately sobered, and took the wand gingerly. "For Merlin's sake girl, it's not going to explode in your face! Grip it hard now, and give it a good wave."

Slightly chagrined, she did as she was told, but to her disappointment, nothing happened. Mr. Ollivander did not seem perturbed by this, and merely passed her another. She tried to imitate the movements she had seen her parents make a thousand times, but to no avail - the wand was no more responsive than a twig would have been.

It wasn't until her fifth try that she was able to make a few feeble sparks appear (which was a relief - she was beginning to fear she was a squib), but Mr. Ollivander was still not satisfied.

The seventeenth wand she was passed immediately felt different, however. When she picked it up, it felt almost warm in her fingers, and the swishing movements felt airy and light, instead of rather forced like they had been with the others. A shower of purple sparks shot out of the end of it, causing her father, who had been standing rather close to her, to jump backwards slightly and her mother to applaud delightedly.

"Excellent, excellent, an outstanding choice," Ollivander beamed, though Rose wasn't quite sure if he was talking to her or the wand. "Eleven inches, beech with a dragon heartstring, and very flexible. You know, beech wands are one of the most desirable types of wand."

"They are?" said Rose, only half listening as she waved the wand - _her_ wand - around.

"They are," Mr. Ollivander said. "Beech is well known for its subtlety and artistry - you can produce great magic with that wand, Miss Weasley. But it is no use just picking up a beech wand because you have heard it can do brilliant things - beech will only work for those it has chosen. Because this particular wand has chosen you, Miss Weasley, I know that you must be wise beyond your years, and very broad minded. It is true of all beechwood wand owners."

"Oh...thank you?" Rose said, not quite sure what to say to this proclamation.

"Do not thank me, thank the wand," he replied.

"Can we pay for that one, then?" Hermione cut in. "It seems it is the one, after all..."

"Pay for it, after the help you gave me? I wouldn't hear of it! The wand is yours, Miss Weasley," Mr. Ollivander cried.

"No, really, if it's all the same, we'd rather pay for her wand," Ron said, and Hermione nodded.

There followed a rather awkward conversation where Mr. Ollivander insisted that Rose should be given the wand "as payment" (though to her disappointment, he didn't elaborate on what for), and her parents insisted that they should purchase it as anyone else would. In the end, they settled for paying just five galleons ("And I wouldn't dream of taking a knut more!"), which confused Rose, as the sign on the door proclaimed that 'prices started from twelve galleons'.

"What did he mean, payment for what you did?" Rose asked, as soon as the shop door shut behind them and they were once more on the sunny streets of Diagon Alley.

"Why don't we go and get an ice cream, hmm?" Hermione said, as though she hadn't heard her daughter. "I think Victoire's got a summer job at Fortescue's, maybe you can show her your new wand!"

Rose, who could recognise a hint when she saw one (and rather enjoyed ice cream), readily agreed, and the curious case of Mr. Ollivander was temporarily forgotten. But she promised herself, as she ate the chocolate sundae Victoire had brought over after being suitably impressed by her wand, that she would get to the bottom of that particular story. There was definitely something going on there...

* * *

**A/N: **Ron and Hermione's wand info came from the HP Wiki, and the information about Rose's wand from Pottermore (_love_ Pottermore!). I'm so glad from your reviews that most of you seem to love Percy as much as I do - yes, Molly's being stupid, but she's not about to realise it any time soon... Thank you so much to those who review, it really does make my day! The next update hopefully won't be as long - I'm in the middle of exams and have been ill, which is why this was a bit slow - but you could always drop me a review, which might make me write a bit quicker!


	6. An Agreement

**Disclaimer:** Copyright JKR.

* * *

Molly had envisaged working in Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes as a lot of standing around, with the occasional ringing up of a product on the till to young boys like her three cousins James, Fred and Louis. She had even taken a book down with her, when they opened at nine, so she'd have something to do in between customers, whom she thought would be few and far between, on this hot Monday in July.

After reading the first few pages during the five minutes after opening, however, the book remained underneath the counter, as person after person came into the store, and they - Molly, her Uncle George and Miranda, a Hogwarts student whom she vaguely recognised as someone from Victoire's year - were so busy that Molly barely noticed the time passing.

At twelve thirty, George sent Miranda on her lunch break, amazing Molly, who had thought that about an hour had passed since opening, not three and a half. With the girl gone, she was even busier, and found herself at times out of breath, as she sped around replenishing boxes on the shelf, recommending WonderWitch products, ringing up items on the till and trying to stop two rather cheeky looking boys from stealing a box of Skiving Snackboxes.

"Go on, have your lunch break now," George said, as she leaned against the counter, exhausted, after restocking the shelf of invisibility hats (which was harder than it looked). "Miranda's back now, and David's here too - he does afternoons. I'll just get them started then come up and join you myself, okay?"

Molly did not need to be told twice, heading into the stockroom and then up the stairs into the flat, where she kicked off her shoes and lay down on the sofa. "Exhausting, isn't it?"

She looked up and saw Roxanne grinning down at her. "Oh my Merlin I have never been so busy in all my life!" she responded.

"I'm so grateful that I'm not old enough to do the full shifts," said her cousin. "Seriously, a few afternoons here and there is _more_ than enough for me."

"I can imagine," said Molly, thanking her as she brought over a glass of lemonade. "Still, at least the time passes quickly. I had worried that I might be bored - you know, sitting around with nothing to do in between sales. I don't think I've ever been so wrong!"

Roxanne laughed. "Oh, hey Dad," she said, from where she was perched on the arm of the sofa. "Molly was just telling me how she wants to sleep for a thousand years after that morning!"

George grinned and entered the room. "Just you wait until tonight, you'll fall asleep in your dinner if you're not careful. Where's Fred, by the way?"

"He went round to James's," Roxanne replied. "He said he'd be back this afternoon though."

"Okay, that's good. Listen, Roxie, the stuff to make the Snackboxes from the Apothecary came this morning, but they forgot the Doxie droppings - can you hop over there for me and ask about them? If they give you any grief, just show 'em this." Roxanne took the parchment he was offering her, and with a wave to Molly, headed off down the stairs. "Fancy a sandwich?" George said, turning to Molly. Her stomach growled at the mention of food, and they both laughed. "I'll get on that, then!"

"I must say, I was very impressed with your WonderWitch sales pitches," he continued a few moments later, as they munched on cheese and pickle sandwiches.

"Oh, I just copied what all the girls in my dorm are always saying," Molly said, affecting a very feminine voice: "'Oh, that colour is _so_ you!', 'The green brings out your eyes beautifully!'. Then you listen when they say something like, 'Well, I do have a date later this week' and throw in a 'The potion in here really does help to enhance your natural glow...' and then if they're still hesitating just finish with something like, 'Think of it as an investment, it'll be really good for your skin - and if you buy this, you get the multi-shaded lipstick half price!' and that's it. Easy!"

"Maybe, but I think it probably sounds better coming from you than it does from me," said George, laughing. "But seriously, I'm thinking of setting you up with a little stall in the WonderWitch section of your own. Have a few testers out, so you can demonstrate how to change the colours of the lipsticks with your wand or whatever, then throw in your little girly chat bit, and we'd make a killing..."

Molly, who thought the idea of getting to sit in one place instead of running all over the store sounded amazing, was delighted. "So does that mean I can stay here and work?" she asked hopefully.

"It still depends on what your Dad says," George replied. "I'm heading out to see him after we've had lunch. So you might want to let me know what it is you were arguing about..."

Molly put her sandwich down on her plate and started picking at her crusts. George waited patiently for her to being her story, and presently she did so, staring at her food the entire time.

"Well, it was about what Dad said he did during the war - you know, leaving and all that. I know, I know, it was a long time ago and you've all forgiven him since then," she said quickly, sensing her Uncle's protest. "But the thing is, he's spent his entire life telling me there's nothing that's as important as family, and I've spent my entire life wanting to be just like him, because I thought he could do no wrong...and then, I found out everything he did and it just felt like a betrayal. And on top of that, I never really wanted him to run for Minister of Magic because of all the scrutiny involved, but I said yes because I knew it's what he wanted. But I just...I'm sick of it. The Ministry, the lies...and I don't know what to do."

-:-

"What am I going to do?"

"Well, storming in and demanding to take her home isn't the best course of action," George said, reasonably.

"But I can't have intruding-"

"Honestly, it's fine! She's much neater and quieter than my two, and she's such a hard worker in the shop, so she can stay as long as she wants to. But I don't think she'll stay very long," he said confidently.

"You don't?" George had never seen Percy look so dejected.

"I don't," George said. "Molly's...well, she's a lot like you in many ways. You never argued with Mum and Dad and I think that's one of the reasons why you left - because you weren't constantly having lots of little arguments with them about...I dunno, doing the washing up or cleaning your room. I argue with my two about those sorts of things all the time, but you and Molly don't, just like you never did with Mum and Dad, and maybe you just have to have one big falling out instead? Get it all out in the open, as it were."

"I don't know..." his brother replied, doubtfully. "But even if it is that, it took me so long to come around and realise I was wrong, and then so long for you to all forgive me-"

"Don't be ridiculous, we all forgave you straight away," George scoffed. "And anyway, that has nothing to do with this situation. Molly'll come round soon enough, I think it'll only take a week at most. I think it's a lot of pressure to live up to, being our kids and famous from such a young age, and it's not surprising she's cracked."

"It's a lot of pressure," Percy agreed. "And I've heaped a load more on them - Molls and Luce, I mean - in running for Minister, which can't have helped, and-"

"Percy," his brother cut across firmly. "It will be okay. Honestly, I don't even understand fully what you're arguing about, but I think that it'll sort itself out soon, if you just give her a few days' breathing space. She loves you, and you love her. End of next week, it'll be like this didn't happen. Honestly, no one can hold a grudge much longer than that, can they?"

Percy appreciated his brother's efforts to cheer him up and help him solve his problems with his daughter, and so he didn't mention that he'd managed to hold one for nearly three years. He didn't really want to think about that himself...

-:-

Ron hovered in the doorway of his daughter's room later that afternoon, watching as she waved her new wand around and muttered under her breath. Rose was a bright child, but even she wasn't able to produce more than colourful sparks yet. Nonetheless, it seemed almost a crime for him to break her perfect concentration (and there probably wouldn't be too many more moments like this for him to witness, he observed, what with her heading off to Hogwarts in a little under two months...)

Eventually she spotted him in the mirror, and turned around, clamouring to demonstrate her perfect wrist movements to him.

"Oh, very good," Ron said, nodding proudly as the wand released yet another shower of golden sparks. "Now, do you want to come down for a cup of tea?" She hesitated for a moment. "You can bring your wand..."

Rose nodded enthusiastically, keeping up a stream of chatter as they went downstairs and Ron made the tea. "Where's Mum?" she asked, as they sat down with the mugs in the back garden.

"She had to pop into work for the afternoon," he said. "And Charlie's taken Hugo down to the reserve, so it's just us. Don't tell your Mum about the dragons bit - I told her that they'd gone to the cinema, you know what she's like..."

Rose giggled and nodded, then fell silent for a while. Used to his daughter's near constant chatterings, Ron asked if anything was bothering her. He knew James had been trying to scare her and Albus with tales of troll wrestling at the sorting ceremony, and thought he might need to put some of those fears to rest.

"In the shop today, Mr. Ollivander wanted to give you my wand for free because of what you and Mum and Uncle Harry did in the war," she said, and Ron nodded.

"We er...helped him out of a tight spot in a cellar once," he said, before hurriedly adding, "but that's all I'm going to tell you about that," when it looked like Rose might ask more about that.

"Well, lots of people want to give you and Mum free stuff and things, not just Mr. Ollivander," Rose said. "Because of what you did in the war, they all love you and you always have to give speeches and stuff on Victoire's birthday because you lead the fight and everything."

"Yes," Ron said slowly, wondering where this was headed.

"And lots of people think that me and Hugo are amazing, just because we're your children! But that's okay, I'm used to that now - even though it's still a bit weird. But Daddy, what about the other people? The people fighting on the other side? Does everybody hate them?"

"That's a tough question," Ron said, considering how much to tell his daughter. "A lot of people hate the people who were directly involved in the bad stuff for good reason - they killed their family members and so on, so that's understandable. But most of those people got locked away in Azkaban for life, so you don't need to worry about them. But the thing is, not everyone is wholly bad. Some people only did nasty things to protect their family and friends, and some people did bad things, but also helped to save other peoples' lives. It's not all...black and white."

"Is that like the Malfoys? I remember hearing you and Uncle Harry talking about them once, and-"

"The Malfoys were kind of a special case," he said carefully. "Lucius Malfoy was evil, no doubt about it, and he went straight to Azkaban at the end of the war. But he forced his wife and son into things too, and yes, they did bad things, but not as bad as he did. His wife actually saved Uncle Harry's life by lying to You-Know-Who, and Draco was forced to do a lot of stuff he didn't want to when he was underage. So those two didn't go to Azkaban."

"But you think they should have?" Rose asked, surprised by the venom in her father's voice.

"Malfoy...Draco, that is...we never got on at school - he was one of those annoying arsewipe kids - don't tell your mother I said that - but he wasn't inherently evil, I suppose. He was just not very nice to me when I was your age, and even though it was a long time ago, I still think of him as an eleven year old, being a little toad to me. But I'm old and prejudiced, so you shouldn't listen to me," he added, with a grin.

"The people like him - the ones who were a bit bad but not evil, they didn't go to Azkaban...but were they punished?" Rose asked.

"A lot of them had to give away lots of their money - they generally came from the old, rich pureblood families, so they were very wealthy. They were fined hundreds of thousands of Galleons, and the money was given to various charities and so on. Some of them had to do community service - Narcissa Malfoy had to do five years, and let me tell you, there was no funnier sight than her sweeping the street outside the Ministry, day in and day out." He paused and chuckled for a moment. "But for most of them, the biggest punishment was losing their social standing - many people resented them and they're still openly snubbed. Nobody wants to be their friend, in basic terms. Anyway, where's all this coming from?"

"Well, I was just thinking," Rose began, "people want to give you and Mum free things for me and Hugo, like my wand. And lots of people think we're amazing, even though we haven't done anything. But what about the nasty people who had kids? Does everyone hate their children just because of who their parents are? Because that's just stupid..."

"Oh, Rosie," Ron said, touched. "I...I suppose there might be some people who dislike the children of the nasty people just because of who their parents are, and that is stupid, like you say. So if you meet someone who's parents were bad, but they're not like that, you should definitely make an effort to be nice to them, because it might encourage other people to do that, if they see you being kind. But Malfoy has a kid starting this September - he'll be in your year - and you should stay away from him, though."

"But why?" Rose asked, confused. "You were just saying I shouldn't be prejudiced, and-"

"I know, I know," Ron said, feeling a bit guilty. "But Malfoys and Weasleys have hated each other for centuries, well before all the war started, it's just tradition... Just...don't be mean to him, just give him a wide berth. Unless," he added, a thought striking him. "You can get close enough to him to punch him."

"Mum says you should never resort to physical violence," Rose said doubtfully.

"Your mother has punched a Malfoy in her time," said Ron conspiratorially. "You'd just be following tradition."

"Really?"

"Oh yes," he continued airily. "It all began back in our third year..."

-:-

"Hey Bill," Teddy said, as he let himself into Shell Cottage by the back door.

"Evening, Ted," said the older man, looking up from the newspaper. "How're you?"

"Not so bad, ta, yourself?"

"I'm alright," Bill replied. "Harry and Ginny'll be round in a bit, I should think. Fleur's just taking Dominique and Louis round to their place - Dom's babysitting the Potters and Lou whilst we all talk this evening..."

"Blimey, I hope you sent her properly equipped," he said, and Bill chuckled.

"Louis and James have both promised to be on their best behaviour, so as long as George keeps little Fred away from them, I reckon we'll be alright," he grinned. "I think Ginny's going to pay her danger money, too..."

"Rather her than me," Teddy muttered. "Is Victoire about?"

"Yes, she's just..." Bill hesitated for a split-second. "She's up in her room. You can head up if you want - but make sure you keep that door open, okay?"

"Sure," he agreed. "Third floor, right?" Bill nodded, and Teddy headed off up the stairs.

Victoire's door was open when he got there, and he could see her sat on the window seat, reading a book. The wireless on in the background, playing a popular tune, and she was mouthing along with the chorus. He smiled - she really was quite sweet for all that she snapped at him... "Knock knock," he said, and she looked up in surprise, and turned down the music with a flick of her wand.

"Do they want us down there already?" she asked. "I thought-"

Teddy entered the room, and sat down in the rocking chair by her bed. "Nah," he said, "but I wanted to ask you a favour so I got here early."

"Come on in, make yourself at home why don't you," she said irritably, rolling her eyes. He was so..._presumptuous_!

"What? Your dad said it was fine to come on up..."

"Oh, then, it _must_ be okay to just barge on in here-"

"I don't _barge_!"

"-and interrupt some very important holiday homework, I just-"

"_Great Wizards of the Eighteenth Century_," he said, reading the spine the book she was holding. "Oh yes, sounds fascinating..."

"Actually," she said, her tone becoming noticeably brighter. "It is quite interesting. We have to do a study for History of Magic about wandlore throughout history, so I'm looking at the wand types of various good and bad wizards from the past to see if what their wands were made of had any influences on their personalities."

"Sounds a lot like Divination if you ask me," Ted said. "Or those daft old sayings your Gran's always coming out with - you know, 'jinx by twilight, undone by midnight', that sort of thing. Load of rubbish, really..."

"Well, yes," Victoire agreed. "But don't you think those sorts of things had to have some truth in them originally, or they wouldn't have become so well-known? According to this," she waved a second book at him, "wandlore is about how certain magical characteristics become typified with ownership of certain wands. So we're supposed to take various powerful witches and wizards, look at what they did with their lives - good and bad - and see their character traits correspond with their what their wands suggest it should, to see if there's any truth in the myths."

"And is there?" Teddy asked.

"I don't know yet, I've only just started," she admitted. "I'm using Ollivander's own book on wand woods though, which was bloody expensive, so I hope it turns out to be true just so I can say I got my money's worth! Fifteen galleons this book cost me!"

Teddy whistled. "That is a bit of a rip off," he agreed. "So what does it say about your wand? Are you a stereotypical owner of...what's your wand made of again?"

"Eleven inches, apple and unicorn hair," Victoire said. She flipped through the pages of the book. "Apple wands are apparently rubbish at Dark Magic - oh darn, there go my plans to take over the world - and should only be used by people with 'high aims and ideals'...oh, and apparently owners are often well-loved and long-lived. Well, that's a relief!"

"I guess all of those things could describe you," Teddy said. "But they're a bit...vague. They could probably describe half the world..."

"I know, right? Bit rubbish, really," Victoire said, flipping a few pages further on. "Oh, wait, this is actually quite similar to Dad - his wand's made of ebony, and it says here that ebony wands are really good at combative magic and Transfiguration and he _is_ a cursebreaker. And it says that owners of ebony wands are often individualistic, non-conformist...comfortable with being themselves, and have the courage to stick by their beliefs. That is remarkably similar to Daddy, isn't it?"

"I guess, yes," Teddy allowed. "At least, it's more similar than yours was... Do me - I have the same wand as my dad, so it's got to describe both of us now, and not just one person. Should be a bit harder..."

"What's your wand made of?" she asked.

"Rowan and dragon heart, twelve inches," he said, and she turned to near the end of the book.

"Hmm, rowan wands are supposed to be like apple ones - unable to do Dark magic. I'll have to see if there were any evil rowan wand owners listed in my book...anyway, yes, very protective and excellent for defensive spells and charms - well, that's good, if you're going to be an Auror and all... Owners tend to be virtuous, clear-headed and pure-hearted...well, you're definitely none of those things at all!" she teased.

"I suppose that could be me or my Dad," Teddy allowed. "But it's all a bit vague again...anyway, I had no idea you want to get into wandlore, Vic?"

"I don't, like I said before, it's for a History of Magic assignment," Victoire replied. "But it's interesting enough. Makes a change from Goblin Rebellions, too..."

"Oh, the Goblin Rebellions! How I miss them," said Teddy dryly.

"They're easy enough," Victoire replied. "The first Goblin Rebellion was in Durham in 832 over the wizards there refusing to sell the Goblins wands. The only details you need to change for all 73 subsequent rebellions are the the dates and the places - they're all the bloody same..."

Teddy snorted. "The Goblins are revolting..."

"That was a new joke in 832," Victoire said sweetly.

"Oh ha, ha," he replied. "Anyway, why didn't you drop History of Magic like it was hot at the end of O.W.L.s like any normal person?"

"I want to go into magical law - do what Auntie Hermione does, you know, improve the rights of magical creatures, and you need History of Magic for that. Besides, it's not so bad - we get a real teacher, Professor Archeo, instead of a ghost, which always helps..." she explained.

"Since when have you wanted to go into magical law?" asked Teddy.

She didn't answer immediately, and Teddy had opened his mouth to ask the question again, when she began. "Last summer, I was out with Dad - we just went into Diagon Alley for some shopping, the most normal thing you can imagine, honestly. Anyway, we went to a little jewellery store, because he wanted to get something for Mum for her birthday, and about thirty seconds after we stepped over the threshold, this woman had chased us out because 'we don't serve your kind in here'. She thought Dad was a werewolf, because of his scars, and..."

"Shit, really?" Teddy asked. "I thought with all the new legislation-"

"Auntie Hermione's done a really good job of getting laws and stuff in place which mean you can't discriminate in the workplace and stuff - basically, you can't turn someone down for a job because they're a werewolf or whatever - but there's still a lot of general prejudice out there," Victoire said. "Against all part-magical creatures, really. When I was in fourth year and fifth year, there were a few girls who were always making snide remarks about me being a Veela. A boy spoke to me? Only because I'd bewitched him with my Veela charms! I got a good mark in an exam? Obviously because Veelas are all sluts who sleep with their teachers!"

"How delightful," winced Teddy.

"I know right?" Victoire said. "I've gotten over it now - like I say, it was a couple of years ago, but it still upset me when it was happening. And it's not just things like that - did you know there's a growing movement to have all the Goblins kicked out of Gringotts because they're not to be trusted with wizard money? I know Goblins and wizards have fought in the past, but that's just ridiculous..."

"So you're going to charge in there and change all that, are you?" he grinned.

"Well, hopefully," Victoire said. "I think we need to work on educating people, so they become less threatened by what they're not used to. But unfortunately, I need to spend three years getting a qualification in magical law before I can do any charging so...yeah. It might take a while. Speaking of training, when does yours start?"

"First of August," Teddy replied. "We do a month's coffee-fetching sort of stuff, observing the mundanity of it, then they send us off for a month around the beginning of the September for what they call a 'realistic training exercise'. I have no idea what it involves, but I don't think it's going to involve a stop in a five star hotel somehow..." Victoire laughed. "Then if you manage that, the real training starts - two years, then one year as an apprentice, then you're qualified."

"Sounds intense," she remarked, and he shrugged.

"Sounds better than all of your books and laws," he replied. "Anyway, this reminds me of the favour I wanted to ask you."

"Yes?"

"I'm going to rent a flat in London," he explained. "I've shortlisted a few - some from Muggle landlords and some from magical ones - and I was wondering if you'd mind coming to look at them with me?"

"Um...why?" she asked, surprised.

"Well...I know there are some matters we haven't exactly seen eye to eye on over the years," he began. "That there, for example," he nodded towards a banner above the door, which proclaimed Hufflepuff (Victoire's house at Hogwarts) to be the number one house, "I would take issue with."

"I won't argue with you on that matter," Victoire said, rather haughtily, "because you know I'd win. Hufflepuff _is_ the best house."

"Oh hush, it's Gryffindor all the way and you know it," Teddy said. "But anyway, even though you don't agree with a lot of my...decisions, you're always honest with me. And I'd appreciate that honesty in relation to apartments I've chosen to look at. Basically, I want a second opinion that I know isn't going to be sugar-coated before I go and throw a load of money at a place," he replied.

"Sounds fair enough," she said. "I can't do Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursday afternoons or Saturday mornings, though, because I have to work."

"How's a week on Wednesday sound?"

"It sounds fine," she replied. "But are you absolutely sure you want my opinion, and not...I don't know, Uncle Harry's? Or one of your school friends'?"

"Like I say, you're honest, and that's what I need," said Teddy. "Just pretend the apartments are my girlfriends, you never normally have any trouble ripping into those..."

"I'm sorry, but you cannot have expected me to like Emma Weinberg - she stole my best friend's boyfriend in fifth year!" Victoire cried. "And Leah was a total bimbo, and as for Shelly Perks, well-"

"Two words, Victoire Ginevra Weasley: Peter. Sneldon." He grinned at her, but the teasing expression she'd had on had vanished.

"I don't want to talk about it," she said stiffly.

Realising his mistake, he tried to apologise, but she cut him off, changing the subject wildly. "Look, it says in here that owners of applewood wands are normally really good at learning the languages of other magical creatures. Don't you think that would be a useful thing to learn, what with what I want to do?"

"I suppose," Teddy said, trying to keep up with the sudden conversation change. "But then, wouldn't the wandlore thing become a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy? Kind of cheating, no?"

Victoire wasn't really listening. "I can already say 'Good morning have you seen Mr or Mrs Weasley they work here' in Goblin, so that's a start. And I'm pretty sure you can learn the entire Troll language in about 3 days - it is only grunts, after all..."

"And you can speak French, and everyone knows the French are strange creatures," said Teddy, winking at her.

She rolled her eyes at him and told him to shut up, but the light, teasing tone was back in her voice and he was glad for it. Whatever Peter Sneldon had done had clearly hurt her, and if he ever saw him again, he would hurt him. Because Victoire was like his sister, and anyone who hurt one's sister should be minded to get a face full of fist, that was how it worked, wasn't it? (And the protective feelings he felt towards Victoire because some jerk had broken her heart were definitely because she was like his sister, weren't they?)

A voice called up the stairs for the two of them to come down before he could respond, and Victoire hopped off her window seat, placing the book on her desk as she passed it. "Come on then," she said, indicating for him to follow her.

"Yeah, I suppose we'd better get this over with," he agreed, sighing. She turned back towards him, surprised.

"I thought you wanted to know about the war and stuff?"

"Well, yeah, but how much more can they tell us really?" he asked, and she shrugged. "Come on, it's not like we don't know the vast majority of it already. And five galleons says this'll just end up turning into them all reminiscing about the good old days. We're not going to learn anything new!"

* * *

**A/N:** Poor old Teddy, how wrong he's going to be!

I really want to bring Scorpius into this somehow (though as they're both eleven, I think writing a romance is out of the question haha) which begs the all-important question: are you team Rose/Scorpius or Lily/Scorpius? Tell me in a review!


	7. A Second Tale

**Disclaimer: **Everything doesn't belong to me.

* * *

Teddy was standing behind Victoire whilst she exchanged pleasantries and hugs with her Aunt, and so didn't see the object placed in the centre of the table when he initially entered the room. Bill was sat at the foot of the rectangular table, with the two spaces perpendicular to him filled by his wife and sister, and Harry was stood behind a chair at the head of the table, but as Victoire made her way around him to take a seat next to her mother, he got a full view of it, and gasped.

"Is that-?"

Harry nodded. "It is."

"But they're really rare! How-"

"I _am_ head of the Auror department, you know Ted. It comes with a few privileges," he grinned. "I was able to borrow it from the head of the Obliviation squad - they keep one around for obvious reasons. Though I guess it helped that Parvati - the head of the department, I mean - is an old school friend..."

"And it also helped that she's forgive you for the way you treated her at the Yule Ball," Ginny teased, and Bill chuckled at Harry's chagrined face.

Teddy threw Victoire an _I told you so!_ look at the blatant reminiscing about the Good Old Days, but she was frowning slightly at the object. "Sorry," she asked, looking up at her Uncle, "But what exactly is this?"

"It's a Pensive," Teddy said, and Harry nodded.

"They're used for storing memories," her Uncle explained further. "That's what the liquid is inside them. They're mainly used by the Oblivation squad these days - it's painless way of checking if Muggles' memories have been properly modified painlessly. But it also helps old witches and wizards keep track of their memories, and Aurors sometimes use them to allow others to see exactly what someone remembers of a certain situation - see if they've missed any clues, or whatever."

"But they're incredibly rare and incredibly expensive," Teddy put in. "We learnt about them last year in Charms - Professor Flitwick said there's only about three in the entire country!"

Victoire's look of surprise now mirrored his own, but Harry merely shrugged. "Like I said, I can generally call in a favour or two here and there... Anyway, Ted, take a seat." He sat down so that Aunt Ginny was next to him on his left, and Victoire was opposite him. "I wanted to start off by showing you a memory. If both of you could take one of my hands-" He held out his palms, and after a second's hesitation, both his niece and godson took hold. "Right. We're going in here."

"How?" said Victoire, but in answer to her question Harry simply leaned forward, and then, all of a sudden, they were standing in the kitchen of Shell Cottage.

It was a different kitchen to the one they had just left, however. To start with, it was much smaller - Bill and Fleur had expanded Shell Cottage as their family grew, but at this stage the expansion hadn't begun.

Victoire looked around the table. Tucking into a meal were her mother and father, both looking much younger - her father's scars were more prominent in his youth - and her Uncles Ron and Harry and Aunt Hermione. Also at the table were someone who looked remarkably similar to Luna Scamander, an old family friend, and another boy whom she didn't recognise. Her Aunt and Uncles and their friends all looked to be around her own age, but they were very thin, and looked exhausted, mentally and physically.

All seven people seated around the table looked incredibly wary and nervous, as though they expected something to explode at any moment, and her mother kept glancing out of the window, Luna over her shoulder and Ron at Hermione, as if to check she was still there. Given their levels of anxiety, Victoire was surprised that none of them had reacted to the presence of three strangers in the kitchen, and voiced this to her Uncle.

"Although we can see everything that I remember, the people in a memory can't see us, nor can we interact with them," he explained. "Look." He walked up to his younger self and waved his hands in front of his face, but the younger version merely carried on eating.

Victoire walked up to her father and attempted to put her hand on his shoulder, but instead, it just went straight through. "Oh!" she said in surprise. "It's almost like I'm a ghost..." she said, and her Uncle nodded.

"Yes, that's a good way of thinking about it," he said. "Right, in a moment, Ted, your Dad's going to appear at the door and tell us you've been born, then we're all going to celebrate a bit..."

Sure enough, the events he predicted took place, and Harry watched as the two teenagers took them in. Victoire was watching the scene with the some interest, and at one point he caught her laughing along with a comment Fleur had made to Bill, then frowning at something Ron had murmured to Dean Thomas. In contrast, Teddy was only looking at one person in the room: his father, and seemed to be drinking in every detail he could about him.

Suddenly, the two teenagers felt someone grab them from behind, and, with a jolt, they were back at the table, with Ginny, Bill and Fleur. "Okay," said Harry, clasping his hands together. "I want you to remember what that memory was like - not the content, but how it felt, physically. We'll get to why it's important in a moment. Now, have either of you ever heard of Horcruxes?"

Both shook their heads, and Harry hesitated for a moment, so Ginny jumped in. "A Horcrux is a way of splitting your soul apart. If your body is killed, you can use that bit of soul which is contained in something to remain alive," she explained, and Victoire looked horrified at the prospect.

Teddy, however, merely frowned slightly. "Surely that's a good idea though?" he asked. "I mean, for Aurors and the like, people with dangerous jobs which might get them killed?"

"You might think so," Harry agreed. "But the way to split your soul is to murder someone." He paused to let this sink in. "Only a very, very few wizards have managed this in the past - it's incredibly difficult, incredibly dark magic. It's also extremely dangerous, so even if you were the type minded to do it, it's quite likely that you'd end up dying in the process."

"And Voldemort had one, did he?" guessed Teddy.

Harry allowed himself a mirthless smile. "He split his soul seven ways." Teddy's eyes widened, and Victoire gasped aloud. "Well, he thought it was seven, what with seven being a powerfully magic number and all," he continued, as if remarking that the weather was quite warm that evening. "It was actually eight. But we'll get that later."

"What were the Horcruxes?" Victoire asked. "I mean, I guess you don't just put your piece of soul in your sockdrawer or whatever..."

"Zhere was Nagini, 'is snake," Fleur said.

"The cup of Helga Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw's lost diadem and the locket of Salazar Slytherin," Bill continued continued.

"A ring which was an old family heirloom," said Harry.

"And his diary, from when he was sixteen," Ginny finished.

"Wait a minute," Teddy said, putting two and two together. "On Sunday, you told us that in your first year there was some cursed diary which-"

"Yes, it was the same thing," she nodded. "He controlled me by means of a Horcrux. Unfortunately, I didn't realise it at the time, and so I tried to get rid of it by throwing it in the toilet, things like that, but Horcruxes can only be destroyed two ways: Basilisk venom, or Fyndfire."

"The Voldemort in the diary controlled Ginny and forced her to open the Chamber of Secrets, which happened to contain a Basilisk," Harry said. "And I was able to use one of the Basilisk fangs to stab the diary, which effectively killed it and the memory of Tom Riddle stored inside it."

"Was it like the memory we just saw, then?" Victoire asked.

"Yes and no," Harry replied. "It was made of the same sort of substance - almost like a ghost. But you saw in the memory we were just in that nothing you do can alter the memories - you could have danced naked on the table wearing just a house elf's tea cosy and no one inside the memory would be any the wiser. The soul inside a Horcrux can interact with you, hence how it was able to control Ginny, and this meant it could put up some resistance when I killed it - but I did manage to kill it, and we were one Horcrux down before we even knew about Horcruxes."

"What was the next Horcrux you discovered?" Teddy asked, eagarly.

"The next one was discovered and ended by Professor Dumbledore," Harry said. "To cut a long story short, he discovered it was inside the Gaunt family ring and killed the soul that was inside it. However, in doing so he managed to curse himself - the curse meant he only had about a year left to live before Professor Snape finished him off...but that's a story for another time. The long and short of it is, I had nothing to do with that one."

"At this point, with two Horcruxes down and knowledge, or at least suspicion of what the other four were, it was just before Harry's seventh year and my sixth," Ginny said, taking over. "And both of your parents got married," she added, nodding first to Victoire then to Teddy.

"We 'ad our ceremony at zhe Burrow, as you know," Fleur said.

"But what you don't know is that, during the reception, the Ministry fell to Voldemort, and we were attacked by Death Eaters," Bill put in.

Once again, Victoire gasped aloud. "Why haven't you ever mentioned it?" she exclaimed.

"For the same reasons you're not going to mention it to Dominique or Louis," her father replied, and she nodded, understanding.

"Anyway, to cut a very long story short once again, myself and Auntie Hermione and Uncle Ron escaped to Grimmauld Place, where we learnt that the locket of Salazar Slytherin was at the Ministry of Magic, so we broke in and took it," Harry said.

Teddy opened his mouth to protest at this brief description, but his Godfather held up his hands. "Yes, I know, needs more detail, but I'll tell you another time if you're still interested - we've got a lot to get through tonight. So, we'd taken the locket, but unfortunately doing so made returning to Grimmauld Place an impossiblity: we had to go on the run."

"How?" asked Teddy.

"Mostly, we just camped out in forests and on moorland," Harry admitted. "Set up various muggle repelling charms, invisibility charms - kind of like Hogwarts' disguises, but on a less grand scale. So we did that for...quite a few months, really."

"What happened to the locket?" Victoire asked. "Did you kill the Horcrux inside it?"

"Yes, but it took a good few months," her Uncle replied. "Ron and I didn't know about using Fyndfire at this point, and even if we did, it was far too dangerous to contemplate. We figured using Basilisk venom would do it, but that's hardly the sort of stuff you can buy over a counter in the apothecary even if there isn't a thousand Galleon price on your head."

"So what did you do?" Teddy asked.

"Carried it around with us for a couple of months - and let me tell you, that was no fun," Harry answered. "The Horcrux kind of...it's almost like it magnifies all the horrible things you're thinking."

Victoire looked confused. "The way it was explained to me," Ginny put in, seeing her niece's expression, "is that, you know if someone hexed you with something daft - you know, a Jelly-Legs Jinx? Nothing serious. Anyway, they do that, and you have a moment of utter rage and hatred towards that person, just after they've done it, but normally, that moment will pass in a couple of seconds, because you realize it's a ridiculous thing. With a Horcrux on, it doesn't. And that's kind of like what it was like for me - with the diary, except I also had moments - well, hours really - where I had no idea what I'd been up to for the past few hours."

"We weren't as badly affected as you," Harry said, with a nod towards his wife, "but that was mostly because you were pouring your heart and soul into that Horcrux, and interacting with it, whereas we just had to carry it around with us. It was still absolutely horrible though - it just makes you into a terrible person."

"How long did you end up carrying it around for?" Teddy asked.

"Probably over three months," Harry said. "It was very difficult to know what was going on with time, what with us being on the run. We didn't even realise it was Christmas Eve until we turned up in Godric's Hollow. We thought that we might find a clue there - we were hoping to speak to Bathilda Bagshot. But she'd been possessed by Voldemort, and we were lucky to escape with our lives..."

"What happened?"

"Auntie Hermione is very good at thinking on her feet, that's what happened," Harry replied. "But unfortunately, my wand got snapped in two, so we were one wand down."

The two gasped. "It was alright though, because a few days later, Uncle Ron...er...managed to get hold of a spare wand from a group of Snatchers - they were people who stalked the countryside trying to find muggleborn witches and wizards. Anyway, I was guarding the tent one night when I saw a silver doe patronus. I thought it might be from Dumbledore, so I followed it, and saw the sword of Gryffindor at the bottom a lake, so I dived in to get it. But it was as though the Horcrux in the locket could tell what I was going to do, and it tried to stop me and hold me underwater. But Ron was able to pull me out and stab the Horcrux in the locket with the sword. It put up a fight, but we eventually got it done."

"Then which one did you go after?" asked Teddy eagerly.

"Well, that was a bit difficult," Harry said. "Of the three remaining Horcruxes, we only knew for certain that Nagini - the snake - actually was one, but obviously that one was quite hard to get away from Voldemort without him noticing what we were up to and stopping us. We were fairly certain that another was Hufflepuff's cup, but we had no idea where we'd find it, and we weren't even sure that the final Horcrux was the lost Diadem of Ravenclaw because the whole point of that was obviously that it had been lost for centuries."

"Couldn't you just get the Order to help you look?" Victoire asked. "I mean, not to be rude or anything because obviously you and Aunt Hermione and Uncle Ron are all really good at magic, but surely if you had really old experienced witches and wizards helping you, you could find them easily?"

"Well, it would have been a big risk getting more people involved, and-" Harry began, but Ginny cut across him.

"Basically, Harry has a hero-complex that means he refuses to endanger anyone else, which is very noble and all, but completely ignores what was happening at school at the time..." she said, rolling her eyes affectionately at her husband.

"Anyway, whilst that was going on," he continued firmly, "We began to discover the truth behind the old story of the Deathly Hallows, thinking that the Elder Wand might be enough to kill Voldemort once and for all. But one night, I got so distracted by it all that I accidentally said Voldemort's name. He'd put a taboo on it - that means he was able to track whoever sent it, so we were captured. We got sent to Malfoy Manor, and after a brief struggle, and some help from Dobby the House Elf, we were able to get away, and we ended up-"

"Here," finished Bill. "And_ that_ was a shock, I can tell you. Not only did he bring Hermione and Ron with him, but two other school kids, old Ollivander the wandmaker and a goblin, all in various states of disrepair. Just turned up in the garden late one night. Fleur and I thought this was it, that we were goners. She took the front door, and I took the back."

"We zhought zhat eef we 'ad to go, we may as well make a fight of eet, split up and take as many down with us as we could," Fleur said cheerily. Victoire was amazed at how easily her parents spoke of near-death, but Bill just chuckled.

"Honest to Merlin, when I saw it was just Harry and everyone in the garden and not a bunch of Death Eaters...well, you're lucky you were in such a state, Potter, or I'd have finished you off myself for the fright you gave me!" he said, grinning wolfishly at his brother-in-law.

"But despite this, your parents very kindly put us up for two weeks, no questions asked - okay, well a few questions asked," Harry said, with a grin at Bill. "You see, when we were there, Bellatrix Lestrange - one of the few people very close to Voldemort - had let slip that there was something very valuable hidden inside her vault at Gringotts. The old wizarding families are incredibly wealthy - so we knew that, by valuable, she didn't mean gold or jewels, that sort of thing went without saying."

"It was one of the Horcruxes, then?" Teddy hazarded a guess.

"Indeed," Harry said. "So we hatched a plan to break into Gringotts to get it."

"But breaking into Gringotts is impossible!" cried Victoire.

"On the contrary, breaking into Gringotts isn't that impossible if you're powerful enough," Bill said. "It's breaking out again that's the real impossibility..."

"But we managed it," Harry said. "Just."

"But how?" said Victoire, incredulous. "I mean, I understand breaking into the Ministry - it's really not that hard to get in, at least to the basic levels. But breaking into Gringotts, that takes really dark magic! How did you-"

"Ooh, let me, let me," said Ginny, raising her hand and waving it in the air as though waiting to be called upon in class. "This is my absolute favourite story because it's so completely insane. I'll tell it. So, Hermione has a hair of Bellatrix Lestrange on her from when she was attacked at the Malfoys' Manor, so she uses that in Polyjuice Potion to transform herself."

"We disguised Ron using some charms, and pretended he was a foreign wizard come to observe the new regime," Harry added, and Ginny mock-glared at him.

"Oi, I'm telling this story thank you very much!" Harry held up his hands in surrender and let her continue. "So yeah, those two do that, and Harry goes under his invisibility cloak with Griphook the goblin. They all apparate to Diagon Alley, and manage to persuade the goblins that they are who they say they are, and get taken down to the vault. Except, the goblins have realised that there's something up, so they set a few traps - their disguises are washed away in...what's it called?"

"Zhe thief's downfall," Fleur supplied, and Ginny nodded.

"Yeah, that. So they no longer have any disguises, but they're inside, so that's good right?" Victoire and Teddy nodded, the former practically hanging off the edge of her seat. For as long as she could remember, her parents had told her to never, ever ever wander off when she came into work with them at the bank, because there was a good chance she'd end up where she wasn't supposed to be and disappear for good, and so she could hardly believe that her Aunt and Uncles had made their way out again - except, of course, they were say in front of her, so they must have.

"Well, once they get inside the vault, the curse on the gold starts activating," Ginny continued. "Every time they touch something, it burns them and multiplies. Basically it ensures that prospective thieves are crushed and burnt to death under mountains of gold. But despite this, they get ahold of the cup that they need and get outside the vault. But the goblins know that something is really up now, and they've come down to fight them."

She paused for breath, and smiled slightly at the absolute silence in the kitchen - you could have heard a pin drop. "So, they do what any sensible person would do in that situation, of course. They free the dragon guarding the vault, jump on its back, and ride it all the way out of the bank, across London and up as far as the Lake District."

"No!" exclaimed Victoire.

"Yes," nodded her father, waving his wand. An old piece of parchment, dated 1 May 1998 flew out of a drawer in the kitchen. "We kept it for posterity," he said, pushing it towards the two teenagers. They eagerly read another version of the story in the Daily Prophet, and glanced at Harry, completely awed. He just shrugged modestly.

"Of course, this leaked out _everywhere_," Ginny said. "The papers got hold of it, the radios - people were starting to broadcast support for Harry. We thought that this could be it, it was the beginning of the end."

"Unfortunately, Voldemort heard about it, too," Harry said. "Well, he'd have to have been deaf and blind not to have. Anyway, he got so angry - because he realised what we'd been up to, with the Horcruxes - that I was able to sort of see into his mind - my scar at this point was a connection to him. But in doing so, he let me know that the final Horcrux - the one we weren't sure about - was up at Hogwarts, and it _was_ the lost Diadem of Ravenclaw."

"So you destroyed the cup on and went up to Hogwarts?" Teddy guessed.

"Yes and no," Harry said. "We'd lost the sword in the vault, and we'd lost our only way of destroying Horcruxes - it had been impregnated with Basilisk venom, you see. And getting into Hogwarts was hard - we had to apparate into Hogsmeade, and then the barman in the Hog's Head helped us with a secret passage into the Room of Requirement, where the entire of Dumbledore's Army had been hiding out for a while now.

"So Luna took me up to the Ravenclaw Common Room to see the replica of the Diadem, to see if that gave us any clues, but one of the Death Eaters who was working there caught us, and that sort of woke everyone up," he continued. "The whole castle began to prepare for a fight - the Order had been alerted, and Voldemort was on his way."

"The final battle?" Victoire asked.

"Yes," said Harry. "I was walking around trying to find this Diadem, or at least a clue as to where it may be, when I realised - Voldemort thought he was special, hiding it at Hogwarts, but students have been hiding stuff in Hogwarts for centuries in the-"

"Room of Requirement!" finished Teddy.

"Exactly," Harry said. "So I found Hermione and Ron, who'd just come back from the Chamber of Secrets. They'd snuck in and killed the Horcrux using the old Basilisk fangs, so now there were only two left. And when we were searching for the Diadem of Ravenclaw in the Room of Requirement, someone set off some fiendfyre which killed that one, too."

"But surely that meant you only had to kill the snake and then you were done?" Teddy asked.

"Well, we did have to kill Voldemort too," Harry said.

"And there was the small matter of a battle going on at the same time," Ginny put in.

"Killing Voldemort wasn't as simple as all that, either," Harry explained. "You see, he'd actually made another Horcrux as well as all the others we'd destroyed."

"Why?" Victoire asked. "I mean, seven is a lot. I'm guessing it wasn't just a 'what the heck, may as well!' situation..?"

"Not exactly," agreed her uncle. "When Voldemort had tried to kill me as a baby, he'd transferred a bit of his soul into me - hence the scar connection thing. I thought that this meant that, in order to fully kill him, I'd have to let Voldemort kill me, without putting up a fight. So I walked straight into his lair, and let him _Avada_ me. But because I'd done that, I was freed of our connection. The bit of his soul in me was killed, but because I'd not put up a fight, I was unscathed. I let him carry me back to show the others in the battle, and they all believed I was dead."

Victoire noticed her aunt was gripping the table very hard. "But they weren't prepared to surrender, and carried on fighting," he continued.

"Well, we weren't going to let you have all the fun," Bill grinned.

"However, because I'd died for them - done what my mother did for me all those years ago - his spells couldn't touch them, and eventually, it just came down to the final showdown between him and me, and he was defeated. And er...that was about it," Harry finished, somewhat anti-climatically. "Any questions?"

"What happened to the snake?" asked Victoire.

Harry smiled. "Neville - that is, Professor Longbottom - killed him. When everyone thought I was dead, Neville said that they'd never surrender, and Voldemort tried to kill him with the Sorting Hat. But instead, Neville pulled the sword of Gryffindor out of it and chopped of the snake's head, killing the Horcrux." Victoire looked suitably impressed.

"What was all the Deathly Hallows stuff about?" Teddy asked.

"Ah, I'm glad you asked that," said Harry. "The Elder Wand is the supposedly unbeatable wand, right? Dumbledore had been the last master of it, and Voldemort wanted it - it's why he kidnapped Ollivander, to find out about it. Anyway, he broke into Dumbledore's tomb and stole it, but wands don't work that way. If I was just to pick up your wand now, Ted, it would probably work for me, but it wouldn't work _well_. If I was to win it from you in combat, it would work much better.

"Anyway, the power of the Elder Wand isn't just in one wand, it transfers between the winners' wands. And as Snape was the one to kill Dumbledore, the power transferred to his wand, and so Voldemort killed him, to try to obtain the power. But! Snape killed Dumbledore, but he didn't disarm him - Draco Malfoy was the one to do that. And who had, in turn, disarmed Draco Malfoy a few weeks earlier? Me."

"_Wow_," said Victoire, with great finality. The adults laughed, and even Teddy grinned through his shock. "That's...that's so...so..."

"Cool," supplied Teddy, and she nodded vigorously.

"It _is_ my favourite part of the story," Harry admitted.

They stayed a while longer, talking and laughing together. A few bottles of Chenin Blanc were opened, which prompted the adults to tell other tales of narrow escapes and daring escapades from the years of the war. At length, someone realised how late it was getting, and Fleur and Ginny disappeared back to the Potters' residence to check the house was still standing ("I'm sure we would have heard if it wasn't..." said Ginny) and collect Victoire's younger siblings. Harry accompanied Teddy back to his grandmother's, leaving just Victoire and her father in the kitchen.

"Worth the wait to hear about?" Bill asked, draining his glass of the final dregs of wine.

"Oh, definitely," she agreed. "I mean...it's seriously impressive."

"It is," Bill nodded. "I have no idea how they did it..."

"I don't just mean that," said Victoire. "Although that's obviously really impressive. I mean, all the stuff that was going on...and how the Order resisted. Everything you all did...it's incredible. And I'm 17, of age...I'm not a little kid anymore. But I _certainly_ could not do even the tiniest part of what you all did. I just couldn't."

"The thing about war," mused Bill, "is that it makes you capable of doing things you had no idea you were capable of doing. Bad things, of course, but a lot of people did an awful lot of incredibly brave, incredibly tough things without question. You_ could_ cope, and you _could_ do these things. But I thank Merlin every day that you don't have to."

Victoire smiled at him.

-:-

"You didn't have to wait up for me, Gran," Teddy said, once Harry had left. "I've been of age for over a year now, and anyway, I was only at Bill and Fleur's."

"I know, but I like to know you're back safe," Andromeda replied. "Anyway, what with you moving out soon, I won't have the opportunity to much longer. Humour me, why don't you?"

"Ha ha, alright then," he said. "Oh - good news on the househunt front: Victoire agreed to come look at flats with me next week, so I can get a second opinion on a few places."

"Victoire? Bill and Fleur's daughter?"

"No, one of the other seven Victoires we know," teased Teddy. "Of course her. Why?"

"She's...she's a lovely girl, but she's a bit..._flighty_, isn't she?" Andromeda said carefully. "Anyway, you're always telling me how the two of you never agree on anything!"

"Nah, she's alright," Teddy said. "She's honest, and loyal - she won't let me make a bad decision. And we only disagree on each other's boyfriends and girlfriends for some reason. Dunno why. Oh, and Hogwarts houses..."

Andromeda's lips twitched, but she stopped herself from saying anything. "If you're happy with that, then," she said. "Anyway, I have something I wanted to tell you. Well, give you, really. But first, I must ask - are you...happy about everything you heard tonight? Nothing upset you?"

"No, it was fine. Well, I mean obviously there were some horrific tales, because it was a war, but nothing's going to give me nightmares."

"Good, good," his grandmother said. "What I wanted to give you was this." She deposited a small notebook on the table. "Your mother kept a diary whilst she was pregnant and after you were born, and I think it's time I gave it to you."

"You mean...I can keep this?" Teddy said reverently, running his hands over it delicately as though it were a precious jewel.

"Of course," said Andromeda. "But Teddy, I must warn you, you might not like everything you read in there..."

"I'm eighteen, Gran," Teddy said, breaking off to look up at her and give her a reassuring smile. "I can cope."

Andromeda hoped so.

* * *

**A/N:** Phew! I hope no one minds that I left out the Ministry bit - this chapter would have been overly long with it in, and I'm thinking of saving it for later. My exams are over now, so I'm free to write all summer - when I'm not working my horrible job in a bar (sadface). This got me thinking, though: if you had to work for the summer in a shop or pub in the Harry Potter universe, where would it be and why? Leave me a review and tell me!

Much love to reviewers x


	8. A Realization

**Disclaimer: **All belongs to the fabulous JKR

* * *

"Oh my _God_!" Roxanne half-shrieked, half-moaned. Her parents, younger brother and cousin looked up at her across the breakfast table, alarmed.

"What's wrong, love?" her mother asked.

"Look!" she cried, rising to her feet and pointing at two owls who were headed their way. The others looked.

"Yes Roxie," said Fred, with the air of one explaining to a five year old that two and two did indeed make four. "It's the post. It comes at this time every day..."

"No, they're Hogwarts owls," Roxanne said, gripping the windowsill tightly. "You know what that means..."

"O.W.L results!" Molly gasped, rushing over to the window to join her cousin.

"Come on, Fred, why don't we go and open up, hmm?" George said loudly.

"But it's only half past eight! And I haven't finished my-" his son began, but George steered him firmly from the flat.

Roxanne was dancing a sort of jig over by the window, and Molly concentrated hard on breathing slowly in and out so she didn't hyperventilate. Her stomach churned, and she wished she hadn't already eaten. The owls carrying their results seemed to take an age to get there, but when they did, and Roxanne pushed her envelope towards her, she wished they weren't there. Her fingers were shaking as she peeled open the envelope, wild scenarios where she'd failed and had to live on the streets flashing before her eyes, and-

-and she breathed. She had two E grades, in Transfiguration and Astronomy, and the rest (Charms, Potions, Herbology, History of Magic, Ancient Runes, Arithmancy, Care of Magical Creatures and Defence Against the Dark Arts) were O grades.

She looked up and caught Roxanne's eye. "Good?" asked the latter, and she nodded.

"Good," she confirmed.

"Good," said Roxanne again, and then the two ran towards each other, squealing and hugging. "I can't believe how well I did!" she said after a moment, her voice shaking with exhilaration.

"And how did you do?" asked her father, who had re-entered the room.

"I got," she began, clearing her throat. "'A's in History of Magic and Ancient Runes - but that's really hard and I'm dropping it as soon as I can." Her parents nodded. "'E's in Potions, Astronomy, Herbology and Defence..."

"That's absolutely fantastic, Roxie!" her mother smiled.

"I'm not finished yet!" Roxanne laughed. "I got 'O's in Transfiguration, Arithmancy and Charms!"

Her parents cheered and clapped, hugging her. "'O's in Transfiguration _and_ Arithmancy?" George asked. "You're a genius!"

"And Charms, too!" Roxanne said. "And I thought I'd totally failed Potions, but I got an 'E'! An 'E'!"

"That settles it," George said seriously. "There's absolutely no way you got any genes from me - the cleverness obviously comes from your mother's side of the family." The others laughed.

"What about you, Molly?" Angelina asked, turning to her niece. "How did you do?"

"Oh, I...yeah. I did alright...good, you know," Molly mumbled. Roxanne snatched the piece of parchment out of her hands.

"Oh my Merlin! Two 'E's and eight 'O's! Molls, you're _amazing_!"

"Well, you know, I want to be a Healer, and you have to get good grades for that, so...yeah," Molly said modestly.

"Yeah yeah, but you were the one who actually did the work to get these grades! They're fantastic!" Roxanne smiled, and her parents added their congratulations too. "I wouldn't be surprised if you're top of our year," she added.

"Oh, I shouldn't think so," Molly said quickly. "What about Hestia Fenwick? And John Winsome?"

"Hestia completely messed up the Transfiguration practical, don't you remember? She transfigured her box into a tiger rather than a tabby and it mauled three people before they could turn it back. She'll have lost serious marks for that. And she took Divination which is a rubbish subject as anyone knows. And John Winsome is really good at practical stuff but he never does that well in the theory, and you have to do really well on both to get the top marks. Nah, you'll be top of the year, just you wait and see!"

"I'm not really bothered about coming top though," Molly said. "I'm just glad I've done well..."

"You've both done superbly!" Angelina said. "We're so proud of you!" Roxanne hugged first her mother, then her father. Fred came back up, and congratulated his sister on her results. "You really have done magnificently there," Angelina said, as the two siblings and George chatted away in the corner.

Molly thanked her. "Actually, I was wondering if I might borrow some parchment?" she asked. "I wanted to write and tell Mum about my results..."

Angelina smiled broadly. "I'm sure we could rustle some up!"

-:-

"_Bonjour Maman_," Victoire said brightly, entering the kitchen of Shell Cottage in her pyjamas. Fleur looked up from her morning paper and smiled.

"_Salut, ma cherie. Ca va_?"

Victoire continued their conversation in her mother's native tongue. "I'm good. Did you sleep well?"

"I did indeed," Fleur replied. "How about you?"

"I did, too!" her daughter said. "In fact, I had the best night's sleep I've had in ages, so that's good! It was almost enough to make me feel good about work today..."

Fleur chuckled. "Just don't hex the annoying customers. What time does your shift begin?"

"At eleven, why?"

"I was wondering if you might do me a favour," she answered. "Teddy left his jacket here last night, and I thought you could pop round and return it for him, before he misses it."

"Can't Dom or Louis do it?" Victoire sighed.

"Obviously not, as you're the only one who can apparate, you silly girl," replied Fleur, rolling her eyes. "Anyway, you and Teddy are best friends!"

"We're not!" her daughter exclaimed. Fleur frowned at her in confusion. "I mean, we used to be best friends, years ago. But now we're at Hogwarts, in different years and different houses. How could we still be best friends?"

"Maybe not best friends then, but you are still friends?" Fleur asked. Victoire nodded.

"I suppose... I mean, we still talk sometimes. Though we mostly end up just arguing together..."

"Good! Then you'll have no trouble being friendly and taking the jacket over!"

"But Mu-um," whined Victoire, switching back to English.

"Tough!" exclaimed her mother. "I do not know why you zhink eet will be so 'ard. You only 'ave to pop over, drop eet off, and zhen you are done. Stop being lazy!"

Victoire knew there was no arguing with her mother when she took that tone, so she merely frowned rather mulishly before going up to change for the day once her mother had left for work. Back in the kitchen, she picked up the jacket, glaring at it as though it were personally responsible for all her life's woes (which it practically was), and walked to the boundaries of Shell Cottage, apparating to Teddy's grandmother's home in Berkshire.

Upon arrival, she immediately wished she'd worn some other clothes.

Of course, there was nothing wrong with her denim shorts and sunny yellow t shirt - on the contrary, as it was almost thirty degrees and not yet ten in the morning, she felt that they were quite appropriate. But Andromeda Tonks, whilst a nice person, had always slightly intimidated Victoire. She always seemed quite haughty and almost regal, and had the ability of making Victoire feel a little childish and silly. She got the feeling that the older woman probably wouldn't approve of her outfit, thinking showing so much flesh (though, really, it _was_ just her legs and arms...and it _was_ only Teddy...) was inappropriate of a lady.

"Oh well," she sighed aloud, gripping Teddy's dragonhide jacket tightly, and making her way over to the back door, which flew open mere seconds after she'd knocked it. If she was surprised by this, it was nothing to how she felt on seeing Mrs. Tonks's face.

"Oh, Victoire, thank Merlin," the woman cried, looking and sounding distinctly frazzled.

"I...is everything alright, Mrs. Tonks?" Mrs. Tonks was always Mrs. Tonks, even though Victoire's other family friends and relations had always been Auntie This or Uncle That and even, as she grew older, just their forename.

"You'd better come in," she said, ushering her into the mercifully cool kitchen. "It's Teddy," she added, as Victoire stood rather awkwardly by the sink. "He's...well, you'd better sit down."

"He's not ill, is he?" Victoire said, her heart beating wildly in her chest. She didn't know why she felt so anxious - perhaps something about Mrs. Tonks's mood was catching.

"No no, it's nothing like that," the older woman dithered. "You see, last night, after you'd been told about the...events of the war, I gave him his mother's diary from the time, thinking he might like to read what was inside it. I thought Harry had told him about..." she drifted off, closing her eyes and pressing two fingers to her temples. She was quiet for such a long time that Victoire almost wondered if she'd forgotten about her, but eventually, she continued. "The war, you have to understand, was a difficult time for us all. And people - good people - did things they might not otherwise have done. Ted's father...he left, for a time. He came back, of course, of course, but the diaries...I really think that I shouldn't have..."

She broke off again, and Victoire tried to make sense of it all. She gathered that there was a diary Ted had been given, that had once belonged to his mother, but other than that, Mrs. Tonks was making no sense whatsoever.

"Mrs. Tonks?" she began timidly, and the woman's eyes flew open. "I just...I don't really see where I fit into all of this?"

"Ted has read some things in the diary which have upset him somewhat," she answered. "He's very angry at the moment - angry at his father, and angry at me and Harry for not explaining things properly. I think most of the anger is being directed at us because his father isn't around to have it directed at him, but that's by the by. I need...he won't talk to me right now. He's shut himself in his room and he won't talk. But I thought that maybe, if you went up to him...?"

It was not quite a question, but it was not a command, either. Victoire realised that, for the first time she could recall, Andromeda Tonks was asking for help with something. She tried to smile reassuringly. "Of course I will talk to him," she said, rising from her chair.

Mrs. Tonks didn't gush (of course) or even thank her, but merely inclined her head in gratitude, and said "Second on your left."

Victoire travelled up the stairs, still wondering at what exactly was going on. Teddy ignored her first three knocks at the door, and her fourth knock was greeted with a suggestion so profane she took a step backwards, wondering whether just leaving would be best. Deciding that that would be the coward's way out (and so what if she was a Hufflepuff? Hufflepuffs were courageous, too...), she knocked yet again, and called out "If you don't let me in this second Teddy Lupin, I'll magic myself in. I did master the _Alohomora_ charm in first year like you, you know..."

She heard footsteps, then the door was wrenched open. "I didn't think you were Gran..." Teddy mumbled by way of greeting. "And it'd've taken more than _alohomora_ to get in here."

"You mean I haven't aged eighty years overnight?" Victoire said briskly. "Excellent news. Now, aren't you going to invite me in?"

"I don't think your parents would want..." he said vaguely, trying to push her back out again.

"Rubbish, Dad sent you up to my room last night. You're not planning on seducing me, are you?" He was so surprised by this pronouncement that she was able to push her way inside. "Now, I just stopped by to return this," she continued, holding up the jacket, "but it seems this room is in need of a good clean, so you may as well put me to good use!" She flicked her wand and the piles of clothes littering the room rose up, hovered in midair for a few moments, before falling back to the floor. "Oh dammit. I never have been very good at household spells... Better brush up on _those_, or I'll never get a husband!" She sighed dramatically, as though this thought devastated her, and then glanced over at Teddy.

He stood without a hint of a smile on his face, despite her larking around. "Vic, I'm not in the mood," he said. "I think you'd better leave..."

"Teddy._ Darling_. I live with four other girls in a dormitory for the best part of a year. If I can handle the crazy PMS, I can definitely handle your mood swings."

"Don't talk about that. It's disgusting, and I'm not in the mood, I told you that before."

Victoire sighed. "Look, I promised your Gran I'd talk some sense into you, but I don't have long before I need to leave for work. So why don't you just tell-"

"Oh, golly, I wouldn't want to interfere with the great Victoire Weasley's work!" Teddy said, throwing his hands in the air in mock-horror. "Merlin, I'm sure the ice cream shop won't be able to cope without her around!"

Victoire was on the verge of making a sarcastic comment at him and leaving, when she caught sight of his hand. "Ted - what happened?"

He looked confused for a second, then followed her gaze down towards his fist, which was covered in dried blood. "Oh, um...I punched a window," he said sheepishly.

Victoire blinked. "Did the window have it coming?"

"Well, I've _reparo_'d it now, so I don't think there'll be too many hard feelings between us..."

"Teddy, _why_? What's happened?" Victoire asked, looking at him with concern. "Your Gran said that you were angry about something you heard last night...but you were fine last night! What's going on?"

"Come and sit," he said, patting the edge of the unmade bed. He sat down beside her, and she realised that he was still wearing the same clothes as yesterday, although they were significantly more rumpled and there was a bright red blood stain on his white t shirt. "Last night, Gran gave me this." He held up a small notebook. "It's a diary my Mum kept. Starts off fairly innocuously - begins at the end of July saying she's pregnant, then talks about your parents' wedding and the attack - and then this, a couple of days later: _Remus left me today - he says that he made a mistake marrying me and this child is the last straw. At first I thought he was just fretting because the full moon is drawing near, it always makes him more angsty, but he's gone and he hasn't come back. I don't know what to do._

"Then this, a couple of days later: _I've moved in with Mum. She thinks it's because I need someone to look after me now I'm pregnant but really it's because I need to look after her now Dad's on the run. I wish Remus was here._

"Then this: _Sometimes, I really hate him for leaving me. I knew what I was getting myself into in marrying him and I didn't care. I don't think the baby will be a werewolf - we've already had a full moon and I didn't feel any different - but if he was, he'd need his Dad with him. Even if he isn't, he'll need a father for Merlin's sake. I can't believe he's just left me. I don't know what I'm going to do._

"Wait!" Victoire interrupted. "I don't understand...your father just left when your Mum found out she was pregnant? But why?"

"I've no idea," said Teddy. "Well, I mean, I read Mum's diary entries - she wrote about the fight they had. He said lots of stuff - that it was a stupid time to have a child because of the war - that he'd be a dangerous father, that I might be a werewolf...he made it pretty clear I wasn't wanted."

"Oh, Teddy, you are wanted!" cried Victoire, but he shrugged.

"Maybe, but not by _him_," he spat.

Something occurred to Victoire. "Last night - that memory Uncle Harry showed us. Your Dad was in it, telling everyone you'd been born, and he seemed really happy!"

"Yeah, he went back to Mum after about a month and a half. She wrote all down in here - dead pleased to have him back, she was. And yeah, maybe he was happy in a vague sense when I was born, but everyone's happy around babies. It's...instinct, or whatever. Plus, you can tell he still didn't want me - he left to go and fight in the battle. And yeah, I know Mum did too, but she didn't have a choice. She was an Auror, it was her job! He _did_ have a choice and he chose to leave me."

"He didn't really have a choice," Victoire began timidly. "The Order..."

"Oh, the Order," scoffed Teddy. "What about me, his son? He left me with Gran - he had a choice. You know, Vic, all my life I've wanted to be like him. When I was eleven and Ollivander told me we'd both chosen the same wand, I couldn't have been more happy. Sure, I can change my appearance at will because of the Metamorphmagus stuff, but I mostly just keep the brown hair and eyes - not to blend in but because I look like him! I didn't want to be an Auror until Harry let slip that that's the job my Dad wanted to do, if he could have."

He broke off, breathing heavily. "Do you remember in fourth year - well, your third - when that escaped werewolf came to live in the Forbidden Forest? And there were all the security measures, and Professor Flitwick nearly expelled those two seventh years, Smith and...whoever the other one was, for going out and trying to catch it?" Victoire nodded. "I was seriously contemplating - and I'm not making this up - going out there and letting it bite me, just so I could be like my father. I know, I know, you don't have to tell me how stupid that is, but I nearly did it anyway. That's how much I wanted to be like him. And now..."

He trailed off, looking so dejected that Victoire, unthinking, reached out and put her arms around him. He leant into her shoulders, breathing deeply and trying to suppress sobs which she pretended not to notice. After a few moments, he straightened up and looked at her.

Over the years, she'd seen many emotions on Teddy's face - from joy to pain to sorrow to anger - but she'd never seen him look quite so hopeless. The worst part was that she had absolutely no idea what to say to him to make it better.

After she'd started a few sentences in her mind, but discarded them before she spoke them aloud (and really, what was there to say to a boy who'd just been betrayed by his hero, eighteen years after his death?), Teddy spoke. "I suppose I should go and apologise to Gran," he said, and she shot him a quizzical frown. "I...said some things to her last night. Well, this morning, really. Woke her up about one am ranting and raving at her for not telling me Dad was a bastard...it wasn't pretty."

"You'll be okay," Victoire said, reassuringly. "She's not mad at you, just worried. Once you've apologized, you'll be fine. Plus, she said that you had...what was it called? Displaced anger. You can't be angry at your Dad because he's not here, but you can be angry at her, so..."

"And so I was a right arsehole to her," Teddy agreed.

"Pretty much," she replied. "Anyway, like I say, don't worry. She'll forgive you. Look, I really do have to get to work, but I've only got a short shift today - I finish at two. So why don't you come by then, and we'll have some ice cream and maybe...I don't know, go to the seaside or something. We can have a nice relaxing afternoon...take your mind off things a bit? Then maybe in the evening you can go and talk to Harry or someone about your Dad?"

"I don't want to talk to anyone about Dad," Teddy said immediately. "But the rest sounds nice. I'll meet you at Fortescue's yeah?"

"I'll look forward to it," she said, and smiled so happily at him that he could not help but feel a bit better already.

-:-

The exceptionally warm weather kept a steady stream of customers in the ice cream shop, and so Victoire and the other workers were kept busy serving - but unfortunately for Victoire, handing out ice creams, counting change and wiping tables did not keep her mind occupied.

And if ever she needed something to keep her mind occupied, it was now.

When she had hugged Teddy, she had done so purely out of comfort - like she did for her little cousin Lily, when she fell and scraped her knee, or Jenny, her best friend, when her boyfriend had dumped her. But the action had left her completely and utterly breathless, and she had no idea why.

The only time she'd felt anything that even came close to that feeling was when she'd been with Peter, right at the start of their relationship, before he'd turned into a massive git. But this was _Teddy_. He was practically her _brother_. She couldn't have feelings for him...it was almost illegal!

She broke off from her reverie long enough to serve two fifth year Gryffindors, Emily McKinnon and Jack Something-Or-Other, who were on a date. Emily kept giggling and blushing at everything Jack said, and, after they'd paid and taken their ice creams, they walked away together, holding hands.

She wondered what it would be like to hold Teddy's hand.

The thought surprised her so much she dropped the empty sundae glass her co-worker had just passed her, which shattered on the ground. She cleared up the mess, ignoring the funny looks she was given. "Get a grip, woman," she muttered, waving her wand so the debris were dumped into a nearby bin.

After that, she tried very hard to concentrate only on ice cream flavours and the amount of change a customer was given if they ordered a deluxe sundae and paid with a Galleon (not enough, in the customer's eyes), but there seemed to be an abnormal number of couples in and around the shop that day which made this very hard.

On her ten minute break, she gave herself a good talking to. "You're only thinking about him this way because you're lonely now that you've broken up with Peter. It's normal. It'll pass." But even she couldn't explain away the breathless (in a completely good way) feeling she'd had earlier. And Teddy was quite good-looking, when he wasn't transforming his nose into a pig's snout...

"Okay, okay," she said, striding up and down in the alleyway outside the ice cream shop. "Maybe it's normal that you have a crush on Teddy. It was bound to happen eventually. You've practically grown up together, and friends always get crushes on each other. It's fine. That's all it is. A simple little crush. Obviously you can't do anything about it because it's Teddy, but just give it a few weeks and you'll be over him. There's hundreds of cute boys who come in here every day, just pick one of them and have a summer fling with them. Easy."

"Who are you talking to, Victoire?" Florean Fortescue had come outside too, and was looking at her with an air of great puzzlement.

"Er...nothing!" she said, flushing red with embarrassment, not even noticing the fact that her response made no sense whatsoever in her hurry to get back inside the shop.

However embarrassing it was to be caught talking to herself, her talking-to had worked. She could freely admit to having a teensy bit of a crush on Ted, which was fine, and she was able to cope with that. It was normal, and it would pass. For an hour and a half, all was fine in the world of Victoire Weasley.

Then, at three minutes to two, on Tuesday the eleventh of July, 2017, Teddy Lupin walked into Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour in Diagon Alley, and Victoire Weasley looked up, saw him, and realised that she did not have a crush on him at all.

She was in love with him, and probably had been for quite a long time now.

She broke her second sundae glass of the day.

-:-

"Your mother thought you might find these handy." George Weasley waved two pairs of flip flops at his daughter and niece, as they staggered out of the Dragon and Snitch nightclub at just after midnight.

"That woman's a genius!" Roxanne said, slightly too loudly, and Molly giggled, slightly too much, in response.

"Wait...I thought this was an underage night at the club for O.W.L. students only? Where no alcohol was allowed?" George said, stifling a grin at the two slightly tipsy teenagers.

"It was!" Roxanne nodded seriously. "But Molly flirted with the bar tender in order to get us Butterbeers."

"I did not!" Molly cried, wearing one flip flop and one bright red high heel. "I have a boyfriend."

"She didn't," Roxanne agreed. "I flirted with him instead."

"Oh boy," George said, shaking his head. "Come on now, girlies, let's get you home. Mind you don't slip on the cobbles..."

"You're not mad?" Molly asked suddenly, having finally managed to get both flip flops on.

"Why would I be?" George asked, confused.

"Because we're drunk," she elaborated.

"Speak for yourself!" said Roxanne, indignantly.

"Molly love, you're a bit tipsy, but you're not drunk," her uncle smiled. "There's nothing wrong with having a few Butterbeers to celebrate your fantastic O.W.L results, especially if you're being sensible and coming home at the end of it! Completely normal." Molly took this in. "When we got our results, your mother's friend - you know, Madam Spinnet, the school nurse? - she drank the majority of a bottle of Firewhiskey herself inside of two hours, then spent the rest of the night throwing up. If you were doing that, I might be mad, but you guys are fine."

"So when she lectures us on the dangers of drinking, I can bring that up?" Roxanne asked, and George looked horrified.

"'Course not, she'd have me guts for garters!" he said, and Roxanne laughed. They chatted all the way along Diagon Alley, as Molly followed more sedately behind.

She tried to imagine her father's response to her coming home drunk - or even a bit tipsy. Then she tried to imagine his response her dress (a gold sequinned number she'd borrowed from Roxanne, which was tight and short and did things for her figure she hadn't thought possible), his response to her request to go to a nightclub (even an underage one) and his response to her request that he merely wait outside a club, instead of coming in to pick her up (at ten, of course, not just after midnight).

Roxanne was lucky in so many ways.

Later, as they were sat in Roxanne's room, getting ready for bed, she voiced this thought to her cousin, who smiled.

"I know, right?" she said, wiping her make-up off her face. "I'm so lucky. No matter what I do with my life, they'll be proud."

"What do you want to do?" Molly asked, turning on her side on the camp bed and looking over at her.

Roxanne smiled again. "I have this entire plan worked out. Want to hear?"

"Always," said Molly, propping herself up on her elbow.

"Well, you know I've always liked clothes and fashion? I've always harboured this desire to become a clothes designer, but let's face it, that's not likely to happen. But then I realised that, given that we're magic, our clothes aren't that magical, you know? Like, what if, you bought a blue blouse that could be charmed so when you put it on, it fades to the exact shade of blue that best suites your skin tone? Or if there was a way to charm your cloak to make it waterproof without making the material go all shiny and horrible?"

"So you're going to do that with clothes? Charm them?" Molly asked.

"Yes and no," Roxanne said. "Those sorts of spells don't exist, so I'm going to work in the Experimental Charms department in the Ministry and get practise developing new charms and save up some money, then when I'm good enough and have enough money, I'll open a shop selling cute clothes with practical spells on them."

"That's such a cool idea," Molly said. "I wish I'd thought of it! What N.E.W.T.s do you need for Experimental Charms?"

"Charms, obviously, and Transfiguration at 'O' grade, and at least one other at 'E' grade. So I'm going to do Herbology, because I'll get to know the sorts of magic different plant fibres are receptive to, Arithmancy because that'll be good for running my own business and Defence, but mostly because Mum and Dad insist that we have it," Roxanne said. Molly liked how she said it - I am _going_ to do this, not I _want_ to do this. She always said she wanted to be a Healer - saying she was going to be one just never seemed right somehow, and yet, with Roxanne, it seemed to fit.

They spent a little while discussing the ins and outs of Roxanne's future business, before Roxanne announced that she was thirsty, and went to the kitchen to get a glass of water. Coming back, she had a piece of parchment in her hand. "It's for you," she said. "Mum left it on the kitchen table. It looks like it's from your Mum."

Molly took it eagerly from her and opened it up.

_Dear Molly,_

_We were extremely pleased to hear your results today - 8 Outstandings and 2 Exceeds Expectations are truly impressive results! All that hard work has paid off, well done love. We're all extremely proud of you! I'm sure Roxanne has done excellently as well, so please pass on our congratulations to her as well._

_Lots of love,_

_Mum_

"What does it say?" Roxanne asked, as she pulled on her pyjamas. Molly read the letter aloud to her. "You see," her cousin replied philosophically, "we're both really lucky to have such good parents, who are so proud of us."

Molly made a noise of agreement, but turned over in her bed. She wished her Dad had written something, or at least signed the letter. Did the 'we' in the letter include him, or was it just from Mum and Lucy?

She wondered if her Dad was proud of her.

She was glad she was facing the wall so Roxanne would not be able to see her tears.

* * *

**A/N:** I couldn't find anywhere that stated where the Tonks' home was, but Berkshire is a real county in England not too far from Surrey, so I imagined that Harry would legitimately be able to fly there from the Dursley's home in DH. Also, fear not - this isn't going to turn into Remus-bashing. I am IN LOVE with him, so I could never do that to his memory. Ted just has some issues to work out :p

Today I had a needle stuck in me and then passed out on some concrete, leaving me with a huge bruise down the side of my face. Today was not a good day. Please cheer me up by leaving me a review? :)


	9. A Morning of Househunting

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Harry Potter. Oh, the woe.

* * *

Dinner was a quiet affair that night. Louis had gone to stay at the Potters overnight, and Victoire seemed much more cheerful than normal, but also sort of far-away (though this did not bother Dominique, as she had long ago given up trying to understand her sister's mood swings). Her parents discussed various events at the bank for a little while, but mostly the meal - a French dish which was a specialty of her mother's, complete with white wine, of which the two sisters were permitted a glass each - passed in companionable silence.

Once it was over, Victoire exited towards her bedroom, muttering something about a Defence Against the Dark Arts essay that she had to get started on. Normally, Dominique would have been annoyed at this blatant attempt to get out of doing the washing up, especially as Victoire was now of age and could have done it all in seconds with a wave of her wand, but tonight, her disappearance actually worked in Dominique's favour. She washed and dried up in record time, then wandered into the living room, where her parents were reading different sections of the Prophet, occasionally passing comment about what they read to each other. Her father saw her first.

"Hello, Dom. Got all that washing up done already?"

"Yep," she nodded cheerily. "There's not as much tonight, 'cause Louis is out."

"I do 'ope he is not causing too much 'avoc at zhe Potters," Fleur said, somewhat worriedly.

"I think Ginny is more than capable of handling those two," her husband replied, and she smiled.

"I zuppose...anyway, Dominique, 'ow was your afternoon?" asked Fleur, turning attention to her middle child.

"Oh, it was okay," she replied. "Nothing terribly exciting - I mostly just lounged about in the sun. I'm having a bit of a break after the hard work of yet another school year."

Bill laughed, but Fleur frowned slightly. "I just wish we could 'ave taken time off to be with you zhree," she said irritably. "We did book zhe 'oliday, but zhe goblins 'ave decided zhat zhere is an emergency what with zhe Argentinian incident...and Bulstrode, at zhe Ministry, 'e 'as done _nozhing_ to 'elp us!"

"Now love, you know as well as I do what these goblins are like. They'll calm down soon enough, and then we can take the time off to be with the kids," her husband replied.

"But zhat might not be until September, and zhen it will be of no use! We wanted zhe 'oliday time when we could be with zhe children, not when zhey are back at 'Ogwarts!" Fleur continued.

"Oh, I'm sure it won't take that long to fix," Bill said positively. "Sanders was telling me today that they're hoping to talk to Bulstrode, get him to drop his-"

Fleur seemed to realise that Dominique's expression was glazing over as she had no idea who any of these people were, and so jumped in, cutting off her husband. "Ah, we will stop talking about zhat now - you do not want to be hearing it, I am sure," she said, addressing her daughter. "Tell me, what 'ave you been up to so far zhis summer?"

"Well, there was Natasha's birthday party last week," Dominique said. "You remember, I went to Diagon Alley with a bunch of school friends? Lucy was there too - we went to the Gobstones Park, and played a game on the giant set they've got. That was fun."

"'Ow is Natasha?" Fleur enquired. "She was always a lovely girl - you should invite her over 'ere at some point, eet would be nice to see 'er."

"She's good," Dominique said. "Actually, that's what I wanted to ask you about. I was wondering if it would be okay for me to have someone over at some point?"

"Oh, you know you do not 'ave to ask zhat," Fleur said airily. "Natasha and Lucy and your ozzer friends are always welcome here!"

"Yes, I mean, thank you, it's just...I was wondering if maybe my friend Richard could come round at some point to...um...do some of our holiday homework together?" She had meant to play it cool, but a faint flush appeared on her cheeks. Honestly, it was so much easier, at Hogwarts, to just arrange to meet in a classroom after hours and not get anyone's permission...

Bill opened his mouth to refuse, and Fleur, as though sensing this, stepped on his foot. "'E may come over," she said. "But 'e must stay downstairs, and you must only 'ave 'im over on a day when Victoire ees 'ere, okay?"

"Okay," Dominique said, trying hard not to sound too relieved. "Thank you!" she added, getting to her feet and hugging first her mother then her father.

"Hang on a-" Bill started to say, but Fleur stepped on his foot again.

"I'll go and talk to Victoire now," Dominique said, positively skipping out of the lounge.

"Are you mad?" Bill asked incredulously, once she'd left. "She fourteen! She can't have a boyfriend!"

"She was fifteen een April," Fleur said calmly, picking up the newspaper again. "And I know what fifteen year old girls are like."

"And I know what fifteen year old boys are like!" Bill snapped. "He's...it's..."

"It's normal," Fleur said. "Eef we do not let 'er 'ave 'im to come over, she will just go and see 'im een some grubby bar or something. Eef we say yes, she will be much less likely to sneak off and we can keep an eye on things. Eet ees much better for everyone this way. You are just panicking because your leetle girl 'as got a boyfriend!"

"_How_ are you not panicking too? She's your little girl as well!" asked Bill.

"Because I know Dominique, she can 'andle zhe boys. And I zhink eet ees easy for mothers to be...'ow you say...objective...with their daughters' boyfriends. Just you wait until Louis gets a girlfriend, zhough. I will make what your mother did to me look reasonable!"

Inspite of himself, Bill chuckled.

Upstairs, Dominique had entered her sister's room to find Victoire singing along at the top of her voice to The Flaming Nifflers new single. "_And I could give you a love potion but it just wouldn't be the sa-aa-ame_!" She winced slightly. For all her talents, Victoire was a terrible singer.

"Essay going well, then?" she asked, and Victoire jumped.

"I have a truly inspirational opening sentence."

"And after that?"

"And after that, I got a little distracted. Anyway, help me out will you?" Victoire pointed to the pile of clothes littering her bed. "I'm going out tomorrow with Ted-that is, I'm meeting some friends tomorrow. I was just wondering which of these two I should wear?"

She held up two dresses - one was red, with a v-neck and short, ruffled sleeves, and a pattern of Golden Snitches all over; the other was a plain yellow strapless number, with a cinched waist. Neither were what Dominique would most politely have called her cup of tea, but nonetheless, she gave them both due consideration, as she wanted to remain on her sister's good side.

"Well, my house pride is telling me to go with the red one," she grinned. "What with me being a Gryffindor and all. But the yellow would really suit you. In fact," she broke off, and dashed across the hallway to her own room. A minute later, she was back, holding a cream coloured cardigan with pink flowers stitched around the hem. "Why don't you wear this with it? You'd look really hot!"

"Are you sure?" Victoire asked, taking the cardigan from her. Dominique nodded. "Aw, thank you! That's so sweet-wait. What do you want?"

"Nothing!" Dominique exclaimed, batting her eyelashes. "I just want to see my favourite big sister look good."

"That'd be more believable if I wasn't your _only_ big sister..."

"Well, actually, there was one tiny favour I wanted from you..."

"Out with it."

-:-

On Wednesday morning, Victoire got dressed in the outfit her sister had pulled out for her, did her makeup and hair, and studied the effect in her bedroom mirror for a full two minutes. Sometimes, even she was surprised with just how good she could look (though of course, she could never, ever say anything like that aloud).

And then, just as that thought crossed her mind, she turned away from her reflection, tore off her clothes and ran into the shower, washing all the makeup off her face. Jumping out of the shower, she had just enough time to throw on an old top and a pair of jeans, pick up her wand and hurry down the stairs before Louis yelled from the kitchen that Teddy was here.

"Overslept?" the new arrival asked, grinning at her as she entered the kitchen.

"What?" she replied, confused.

"The hair," he said, pointing. "Soaking."

"Oh," Victoire said, giving a slightly strangled laugh and pulling a hair tie off her wrist. "Yeah, something like that."

"You've been up for hours," Louis said, accusingly.

"I've been...reading. All morning," his sister replied, throwing her hair into a ponytail. "Anyway, I'm ready now, and that's what counts, right?"

"Right," Teddy nodded.

"You weren't reading, you were dancing around your room to the wireless," said a voice from behind a box of cereal. "And you were wearing a big, fancy dress."

"Well...I'm going out later, so I wanted to practise my outfit," Victoire replied, wishing both that Louis would shut up and that she had been able to come up with a less ridiculous excuse for her behavior than 'practising her outfit'.

"Who're you going out with?" Louis asked. "Is it Teddy? Ewww, Victoire and Teddy are going out!"

"Shut up Louis!" she snapped, feeling herself blushing. Even the Veela genes couldn't completely eradicate that Weasley trait, it seemed.

"Victoire and Teddy, sitting in a tree..." singsonged her brother.

"Shall we go?" she said calmly, turning to Teddy and completely ignoring her brother.

The older boy seemed to find the entire scene highly amusing, but merely grinned and started towards the back door. "Sounds like an excellent plan," he said. "I thought I'd side-along you to the estate agent?" She nodded, and the two exited the kitchen without a backward glance at Louis (who had suddenly found himself rather preoccupied with his goblet of pumpkin juice, which had somehow ended up in his hair).

Teddy apparated the pair of them to the estate agent, a small building in muggle London that was owned by a wizard who had both magical and muggle properties available for rent. She had assumed that they would be straight off to see the three flats Teddy had shortlisted, but there was, apparently, paperwork to be filled in and questions to be answered before they could do so. This would not have been a problem, were it not for the fact that it left Victoire stuck on a sofa with nothing to do but _think_.

And thinking was really not what she wanted to be doing at that moment.

She wasn't entirely sure she wanted to be spending time with Teddy, either. Whilst she enjoyed being with him (as she always had, really), she had a constant fear that she would say something which might give the game away that she liked him. Then there was the whole Veela problem: unlike all the boys who went to Hogwarts and weren't either related to her or gay, Ted had never been influenced by her Veela charms. She could never completely get rid of those, of course, but dressing up and plying on the cosmetics and so forth always made them more obvious. Yesterday, she had wanted that, and had planned her outfit to maximise it - after all, what boy could resist _Victoire Weasley_ all dressed up? But she'd realised that morning that that was precisely what she _didn't_ want: if Teddy was going to fall for her, she wanted him to do it naturally, not because of magic, particularly after what had happened with her ex-boyfriend, and so she'd deliberately dressed in as plain and boring a fashion as she could.

This had obviously worked - he had not shown any interest in her whatsoever when he'd come to pick her up. But of course, the fact that it had worked was both a blessing and a curse: he wasn't interested in her at all. Still, she reasoned to herself, better he never like her in that way at all than he like her for her Veela charms.

Mostly.

She was broken off from her musings by the subject of them himself - Teddy had come to tell her that they were ready to leave. "Where're we going first?"

"Here," answered the most bored looking woman she had ever seen in her life. She passed them both a piece of parchment with an address on. "This is a muggle block of flats that has been converted by a wizard landlord to have all the magical amenities you need whilst still being in the centre of a thriving muggle neighbourhood please apparate to the address after me," she said in a rushed monotone, before turning on her heel and disappearing.

Teddy and Victoire exchanged glances. "Wow," he muttered in an undertone. "She's sold me on it already..." Victoire giggled. "After you," he said, and they both apparated to the address.

"The lift is not working so we have to climb the stairs the flat is on the fifth floor please follow me," the woman continued in her rapid, bored sounding way as soon as they'd arrived.

"Do you think she doesn't want to be here, maybe?" Victoire whispered to Teddy as they followed her up the stairs.

"She's really getting on my nerves," Teddy replied. "Still, it's the houses we're here for, isn't it?" Victoire nodded. It was strange, she thought, as they climbed the stairs, that Teddy wanted her opinions on the place he was going to live - he'd never seemed to care too much either way about what she thought about things before. But he'd said he wanted honesty, and if he asked her opinion about this place, she would be honest: it was a dump.

When they stepped inside, she took in the tiny main room that made up everything except the bedroom and bathroom. Even Mrs Scower's Magical Mess Remover would have a hard job removing the mould from the walls, and it smelled rather like something had died in there. She wasn't very squeamish, but the thought of sitting on the very suspiciously stained sofas made her stomach turn.

"Here is the bedroom I'm sure you and your girlfriend would like to have a good look at that," the woman - whose name badge, she'd managed to note, read Michelle - rattled off, and Victoire blushed crimson.

"Oh...er...I'm not...that is..." she stuttered, but Teddy took over.

"This is my fiancee, actually," he said, slipping an arm around Victoire's waist. "Yeah, we want to find a nice place to raise our children together."

"Children?" she hissed at him, completely taken aback.

"Well, yes, child for now, of course," he amended. "We need a place for her to come after she's had the baby - she can't stay at Hogwarts with a newborn, after all!" Victoire didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

"Oh!" Michelle's attitude had completely vanished, and she looked both rather surprised and a bit flustered. "I'll just let you...I mean...the bedroom's through there..." She crept backwards from them, as though worried they might explode.

Victoire followed Teddy into the bedroom. "What're you playing at?" she hissed.

"Like I said, her attitude was getting on my nerves," Teddy shrugged. "And she's left us alone now, hasn't she? So you can tell me what you really think about the place."

"Honestly?" she asked, and Teddy nodded. "It's horrendous. More than awful. You'll probably come away with all sorts of diseases. What's the rent?"

"Ten Galleons a week," he said.

"It's not worth half that. Or even a quarter of that! Don't take it," she advised, and he nodded.

"Yeah, that's what I thought myself," he said. "Good to see that we actually agree on something for once, though." She laughed. "Anyway, let's go and have a look at the other two. I hope there's somewhere nice for us to raise our child!"

"Ted!"

The second apartment they looked at was nicer than the first, and Michelle once again gave the two of them a wide berth when Teddy started talking loudly about baby gates and space for cradles. In the third apartment, she left them alone completely, stepping outside to have a cigarette. "_Finally_," Teddy said. "We can have a proper look around!"

"You can't go nosing through people's things!" Victoire said.

"Didn't you listen to what she said? This place has been empty for six months since the last tenant moved out - the only stuff here is what it comes with. Although I hope that picture doesn't have a permanent sticking charm on it - it's hideous!" He pointed to the painting, which depicted a young girl in a large bonnet and flowery dress skipping through a meadow, picking daisies. On hearing what Teddy said, she took on a hurt expression, and turned her back on the pair of them.

"Making friends already, I see," Victoire said.

"Oh shut up," he said. "Anyway, what do you think?"

"I'll reserve judgement until we've seen it all. Oh, bathroom's clean, at least...that's a good sign, right?" she said, opening a door and peering in.

"Allow me to present to you the boudoir," he said, ignoring the bathroom and opening the other door with a flourish.

"I bet you say that to all the girls," she grinned, and stepped inside. "Your silly lines won't work on-oh!" she gasped aloud at the sight of the bedroom. If she hadn't known already that the property was magical, she might have wondered how so much stuff could be fitted into one room which appeared so tiny from the outside. Along the far wall was a beautiful old wardrobe; directly opposite was the most comfortable-looking armchair she'd ever seen, and in the centre of the room was a four-poster bed, almost identical to the ones at Hogwarts.

The window, which made up almost the entire width of the wall opposite the wardrobe, had a stunning view of the city London, which, to a girl who spent her entire life in the countryside, was suitably enchanting. "Oh, Teddy, you have to take it!" she cried. "It's amazing - the entire place is lovely, and it's connected to the floo network, and look at this bed! And this view! It's just lovely! You've got to have this one!"

Teddy laughed at her enthusiasm. "If I didn't know better, I'd say you wanted to move in with me yourself."

Victoire froze for a second - she'd tried to be normal and friendly with him, so he wouldn't guess at her true feelings, but had she not succeeded? - then noticed the teasing twinkle in his eye. He was just kidding. "Nah, it's not me, it's the baby, y'see," she said seriously, and he laughed again.

"Only the best for my son," he said.

"It's a girl," she said firmly. "If I have to go through labour, I get to pick the gender."

"I know someone who's going to get a shock in the delivery room," Teddy grinned.

"That's still nine months away, plenty of time to prepare!" she said airily. "Anyway, are you going to go tell Michelle that this is the place you want?"

"You definitely think I should go for it?"

"I do."

Teddy went to find the woman, who took them back to the shop to fill out the paperwork for the flat. There was a lot of it, and Teddy suggested to Victoire that she go home, as he didn't wish to bore her by making her wait whilst he filled it in. "I mean, if you don't want to go and get lunch or something after?"

"Oh!" she said, a faint flush of surprise appearing on her cheeks. "That would be lovely-"

"Oh, but you're going out with your friends!" he said, suddenly remembering their earlier conversation. "I'm so sorry to have kept you so long!"

"What? No, no, it was no trouble," she said quickly. "And you didn't keep me, it was-"

"No, you really have to go!" he said. "I don't want to make you late for your friends, and I'm so grateful for your help today - it's not right that I thank you by spoiling your afternoon. Go and have fun!"

_Damn_ Louis for saying that she was going out later! Or was it she who had made that up? She couldn't remember. Merlin's pants, if only she had a time turner! She said goodbye to Teddy, who was fairly pushing her out of the door at this point, and apparated back to Shell Cottage, where she threw herself down on her bedroom floor.

All in all, the morning had not been entirely successful. Not only was there the rushed ending - and really, whilst house hunting could not be called a date, lunch could...couldn't it? Even if one of the participants was blissfully unaware of the fact that it was a date? - but Teddy had treated the idea of being with her as a joke, and not even a small one: a huge, awful joke, almost a parody of a joke. At least she knew now what his true feelings for her were.

Still, she mused, as she stared up at the ceiling, and tried not to feel too hurt by this, at least she could accurately imagine what his bedroom looked like...

She sat up in shock. She had definitely better keep that thought to herself!

-:-

Molly was almost exactly two years older than her sister, but because of when their birthdays fell (Molly's was right at the beginning of September, Lucy's the end of August), they were only one year apart in school. Consequently, most people assumed upon meeting them that they were very close, sharing everything from clothes to gossip tidbits to boyfriend related heartache.

This was, however, untrue - and not just because neither were the gossiping type. It wasn't that the two disliked each other (in fact, bar the occasional argument, they got on fairly well), it was more the fact that they had no real reason to be close. When she had been very young, Molly had had trouble understanding the difference between her sister and her cousins: the children were raised, like their Grandpa had once said, like a litter of puppies. They all went to a muggle primary school after turning eight (when it was assumed that they were old enough to control most of their accidental magic), but before that they were taught together by their extended family: Ginny taught them how to read and write; Fleur taught them a little French; Angelina, who was good with numbers, basic maths; George and Ron how to fly and the basics of Quidditch; Hermione and Audrey how to get on in the muggle world and so on.

After that, Molly went to school a year ahead of Lucy, and was sorted into Ravenclaw, whilst her sister became a Hufflepuff. Being in separate year groups and Houses made it hard for them to be very close - whilst they loved each other, Molly would have said she was much better friends with Roxanne, and Emily and Kulwinder, two of her roommates, than her sister.

It was as much to her surprise as it was to Lucy's that, when the latter walked into Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes late on Friday afternoon, Molly found herself becoming rather teary-eyed as she hugged her sister fiercely. She loved her Uncle George's family - and she was incredibly greatful to them for letting her stay there - but sometimes, only a sister would do. "Ahh Molly, I can't breathe!" Lucy choked, and Molly let go of her hurriedly.

"Sorry," she said, but Lucy waved off her apology.

"S'alright, I'm pretty sure nothing's broken," she said, and her sister laughed. "How're you?"

"I'm alright, you? What're you doing here?"

"Well, Roxie told me you were working here, and so I thought I'd come along and see what it is that you do...but it seems you don't do very much! Where are all the customers?" Lucy asked, looking around. Apart from two boys over by a display of Decoy Detonators and their Uncle George, who gave her a wave, the shop was deserted.

"Apparently, freezing weather and it pouring with rain is a bit off-putting to shoppers," Molly said. "Since the weather turned naff yesterday we've hardly had anyone in here - they've all stayed at home in the warm and dry. Lightweights."

"Oh, British summertime," said Lucy, sighing. "Always such a disappointment."

"Well, we did have some nice weather earlier in the week. And the man on the WWN this morning said that-"

"I did _not_ floo into Diagon Alley to talk to you about the weather," Lucy said firmly. "Let's change the subject. I heard you did amazingly on your O.W.L.s? Apparently you're now some kind of official genius..."

"Yeah, I didn't do too badly at all - I was really pleased with my results," Molly nodded. Lucy congratulated her sister again, and then there was a lull in the conversation. "So," Molly began hesitantly. "How's Mum and...everything?"

"Oh, everything's grand," Lucy said. "Mum and Dad had forty fits last night though - Dom came round and mentioned that I pulled off a Wronski Feint in the match against Slytherin and once they'd had that explained to them for the seven thousandth time, they forbade me from doing it ever again and read me a list of every Quidditch injury ever. Seriously - the dates of the injuries went back to 1483! I've only just got out of the lecture! They're so paranoid." She rolled her eyes and Molly laughed. "They actually threatened to ban me from playing Quidditch if I did it again. I swear to Merlin, I nearly killed Dom and her big mouth..."

"Oh, God!" Molly chuckled. "What did you say?"

"Oh, the usual," Lucy waved a hand airily. "I stropped for a bit and slammed a few doors, they yelled a bit about my bad attitude, I went to bed in a huff or was sent to my room, depending on who's side of the story you believe, then it all blew over. It's quite predictable, really," she added, for once showing insight beyond her years. "That's why I was so amazed by what you did. You know, leaving. I talk the talk, but I never actually follow through. You're...you made a statement, that night."

"Eh, well..." Molly said awkwardly. "I wasn't..."

"No, it's okay," Lucy said. "It was bound to happen at some point. I fall out with Mum and Dad all the time, and you never do. So I get to have lots of little arguments with them constantly, and you get to have one big one once."

"That's actually what Uncle George said," her sister said.

"Great minds, and all..." Lucy preened. "But seriously, you have to come back soon, right?"

Molly's face fell. She wasn't going to return until her father apologised, but that didn't seem like it was going to happen any time soon. But her sister seemed to expect... Fortunately, Lucy's attention had been caught by something else, and Molly was saved from explaining things. "Ooh, 25 per cent off Skiving Snackboxes! You could totally get me some of these for my birthday!"

"Luce, it's over a month until your birthday!"

"I know, but see it as me giving you plenty of notice," Lucy nodded. "I like Fainting Fancies best - they're the most dramatic."

"I actually do have a bit of money this year, what with my job and all. I can get you something nice, if you want. After all, you only turn fifteen once, ha ha!" she laughed rather awkwardly. It wasn't a guilt-trip present, apologizing for leaving Lucy, no, not at all...

"Hmm," Lucy said thoughtfully. "Well, seeing as how you're Johnny Moneybags, I think I'd quite like the Holyhead Harpies for my fifteenth, please. Though, if you can't quite stretch to that, I'll take Puddlemere United."

"The Holyhead Harpies, got it," Molly said. "I'm sure Auntie Ginny can do me a family discount, and all... But seriously, is there anything special you'd like, or shall I just stick with tradition and get you a nice book?"

Lucy pulled a face at this suggestion. "Seriously, there is something I would like," she said. "For you to be back at home and talking to Dad. I know, I know, it's stupid and cheesy. But I miss you and so do they, and I know you won't admit it but you miss them, too. And surely you've made your point now, you can just forget about the falling out and come home?"

"No, I can't just forget about it!" Molly replied, shocked. "Dad lied to us, Luce, for all these years! We wouldn't have found out if we didn't find that stupid box, and he'd _still_ be lying to us! I hoped that you, of all people, would understand!"

"But he didn't really lie to us," Lucy argued. "It's not like we ever asked him directly... Plus, he was young, he made a mistake, so what? Yeah, it was quite a big mistake but he came back before the war was over - he realised he'd made a mistake! He was sorry, and everything..."

"Saying sorry is what you do when you accidentally spill a drink on someone," Molly said. "It's not what you do when you walk out on your family!"

"Molly, I think you're overreacting! He was young then-"

"He was older than we are now!"

"Exactly! That's still really young, and things were different then, because of the war...it was this really scary time, and-"

"You know what, Luce, I think it's just that you're too young to understand how I feel. And it seems that immaturity does tend to run in our family." As soon as she'd said the words, Molly wished she could scoop them back into her mouth. The look of hurt that flashed across her sister's face twisted her insides, and she waited the torrent of anger from hot-tempered Lucy. But it didn't come.

"I-I think I'll go home now," Lucy said, very quietly.

"No, Luce! I didn't mean..."

"No, it's just, it's half five, Mum'll expect me back for dinner soon, and...yeah...sorry," she started towards the door. Molly hurried after her.

"No, wait, please! I'm really sorry, I didn't mean that-"

"Excuse me, miss, can we please get these?" The small boys who had been over by the Decoy Detonators earlier held up armfuls of merchandise.

"I - yes - hang on - sorry - can you - Lucy..." Molly said frantically, trying to take the products off the boys, look around for her uncle, who seemed to have disappeared, and grab hold of her sister at the same time.

"Moll, you have customers waiting," Lucy said. "And I really have to get back. I'll see you soon."

Molly hurried the boys to the counter, bagged their goods and gave them the correct change, trying to stop herself from cursing them as they laboriously counted out sickles and knuts. The second the magical quill stopped writing out their recipet, she grabbed the parchment from underneath it, thrust it at the boys and raced down the street to the floo grate at the bottom of Diagon Alley.

Lucy had already disappeared.

She put a hand over the stitch that was forming on her side. "Want to buy some floo powder, miss?" asked the grate's attendant.

"What? Oh, no, sorry, I was just looking for someone, but I think they left already..."

"Well then, clear off! Can't have you holding up the queue!" he snapped. Molly decided not to point out the fact that there was no one queueing behind her, and turned away, walking back towards the store, and her new home.

She felt, though she could not really explain why, rather anti-climactic.

* * *

**A/N:** Whew, there we go! Hope you enjoyed the cute Teddy/Victoire :-) Quick question for you all: what do you guys see Louis as, in terms of the Veela-ness? I have him as a red-head (looking like a mini-Bill, basically), mostly because I remember reading somewhere that only women could be true Veela. So I always think that Fleur's daughters would be 1/8th Veela, whereas her son would just be a typical red haired Weasley. But I can't remember if that only girls can be Veela thing is canon or a product of my overactive imagination...anyone have any ideas?

If you review, I will get you a Pygmy Puff :D


	10. A Garden Party

**Disclaimer: **Property of JKR. She's the boss.

* * *

The problem, Ginny thought, with having such a large extended family was the struggle to get everyone together at the same time for significant occasions. There was always someone who had a Healer appointment, or was going to see their Great-Grandmother, or couldn't get the time off work – and that was just when the kids were home. She had therefore given notice three months in advance that she was hosting a garden party in celebration of Harry's birthday (July 31st), Fleur's birthday (July 6th) and Ron and Hermione's wedding anniversary (July 20th) on Saturday, 22nd July, and anyone who didn't turn up would be systematically dismembered.

Those who said that violence was never the answer were wrong: her threats had worked and her entire extended family had turned up to the party. Not only had they turned up, but everything seemed to be going well - the terrible trio were (mostly) behaving themselves; her mother had been persuaded to put her feet up and do absolutely nothing for the evening and even Harry and Ron had managed not to set themselves - or anything else - on fire with the barbecue (she suspected Hermione had taken charge). Indeed, Ginny reflected, the only thing that had gone wrong was Teddy's continued ignoring of his Godfather.

Andromeda had told them all about the incident with Tonks' diary. She felt sorry for Teddy - it couldn't be easy to find someone you had once worshipped as a hero had flaws just like everyone else, and it must have been even harder to realise that you yourself were responsible for the flaws. It was one of the reasons she had been so reluctant to tell her children (and she included Teddy in this, for all he was not her flesh and blood son and an adult now) about the events of the war: she was most worried that they would end up hero-worshipping their parents, instead of seeing them as they were - normal human beings who'd done the best they could under difficult circumstances.

Ginny was all for sitting Teddy down and telling everything she could remember about how wonderful Remus was, but Harry had advised against this, suggesting that they let Teddy come round in his own time (which, if she wasn't mistaken, meant that Harry got to ignore the situation in the hope that it would go away if he said nothing to Ted). This had led to both of them avoiding each other, and Teddy glaring mulishly at Harry over his spaghetti when he had come round for dinner the other night, whilst she and James (exhibiting a rare display of maturity) had made very forced conversation about the weather and the Chudley Cannons prospects' for next season.

And frankly, she'd had enough of it all by now.

She got to her feet and vanished a few bottles of Butterbeer, before heading over determinedly to Teddy. "Hello, love," she said, and he smiled over at her in greeting. "Can you do me a favour and go into the pantry and fetch the butterbeer that's in there? I seem to have forgotten to have brought it out."

"Sure," the teenager said affably, heading indoors.

As soon as he had done this, she grabbed a pile of paper plates, handing them to the nearest passing Weasley. A rather confused Lucy agreed to her aunt's demand that she take them down to the bottom of the garden ("I think your mother was looking for them or something"), then Ginny turned to Harry, and asked in her sweetest possible voice if he might go into the kitchen to look for the plates she had foolishly misplaced. Harry agreed, and stepped into the kitchen, just as Teddy came out of the pantry.

"Hey Ginny," he said, ignoring his Godfather entirely, "I couldn't find the butterbeer, are you sure it's there?"

Harry turned, surprised that his wife had followed him, but before he could say anything to this end, Ginny waved her wand and locked the door connecting the kitchen to the outside of the house. "You two," she said fiercely, "_talk_. I'm going to lock this door for fifteen minutes, and then come and let you out, and you _will_ have sorted this whole argument out by then if you know what's good for you. _You_," she said, jabbing her wand at Teddy, "will listen to what Harry has to say and stop being rude and ignoring him. And _you_," she poked her husband's shoulder, "will stop avoiding the problem and actually give the boy some answers!" With that, she closed the door out into the garden, locked it, and headed off in the direction of the barbeque.

There was a very awkward silence for several moments, whilst Harry sipped his drink and very pointedly looked everywhere except at Teddy, before the younger man burst out, "I'm sorry I've been rude to you and I know it's not your fault and I am really sorry, but...why didn't you tell me what he was like?"

"Teddy, I've been telling you all your life what your father was like!" Harry didn't have to ask who he meant. "He was a kind, wonderful, loving man, who-"

"Walked out on his pregnant wife in the middle of a war and didn't want the child he came back to," Teddy finished.

"A kind, wonderful, loving man who _made a mistake_!" Harry said loudly. "What he did was wrong, yes, but fatherhood's a difficult thing - you don't know it until you've tried it, and-"

"No," Teddy shook his head. "Don't tell me I'm too young to understand this - I am eighteen years old and will have a full time job in just over a week. I am an adult now, so please, please treat me like one."

Harry paused, remembering how it had felt when he was younger, to be told on the in-breath that he must fight and resist Lord Voldemort at all cost and on the out-breath that he was too young to know what was going on. "Ted, it's not your age," he said. "I...when Ginny found out she was pregnant with James, I was happy - of course I was! And we celebrated and told everyone and it was all lovely and happy, and then one day, when she was about five months along, I completely panicked and ran to the nearest pub, drank myself into oblivion and turned up on our doorstep at two am blind drunk and wondering why Ginny was mad with me. After that, let me tell you, I was lucky I remained man enough to have Al and Lily."

Even Teddy cracked a smile at this. "I get what you're saying - and I'm not saying that becoming a parents is easy - but that's the kind of mistake that's forgivable. I'm sure I've heard stories like that from Bill and George and Ron and Percy over the years, it seems normal. But deserting your wife for months at a time in the middle of a war? That's on a completely different level."

"You know, at the time, I agreed with you," Harry said. "Remus - your Dad - he came to me and Ron and Hermione when we were hiding out and offered to come with us because Tonks would be better off without him. And I told him in no uncertain terms to go back to her, that he was a terrible father for thinking of leaving...and in the end he did go back. But as I've gotten older-no, hear me out-as I've matured and realised what a daunting task being a father is, I've come to see things from his point of view. He was a werewolf, in the middle of the war, he was afraid that you would become a werewolf too...there was a lot going on."

"I wish people would stop using that excuse," Teddy said.

"What excuse?"

"'There was a lot going on'," he replied. "'A lot going on' is why you forgot to do your Charms homework, or pick up a bottle of milk at the shops - it's not why you walk out on your son."

Harry sighed. This conversation wasn't going the way he'd planned it. Truth be told, he'd barely planned it beyond saying "your Dad made a mistake but in the end everything was okay and he loved you very much" and Teddy agreeing that this was indeed the case.

"Ted...I'm sorry I didn't tell you about this sooner," Harry said. "But you have to understand: I didn't hold out on you because I knew you'd be upset or I didn't want to harm your perception of your father or anything like that. I didn't tell you simply because I didn't think it was important. It was such a small detail - he made a mistake, it got fixed, the end - that it didn't even register that it might be important, and I honestly forgot about it. Does that help?"

"Not really," sighed Teddy. "Everyone keeps saying that it was a small thing, that he fixed it, but...I don't know. Can you imagine if your Dad had done that to you? And you didn't even have him around to explain it to you?"

He had a point, thought Harry.

"Why don't you," Harry said, slowly and carefully, "Completely forget about it for a week or so. Do other things, go out with friends, that sort of thing. Then, when you're a bit...distanced from the immediacy of it, go back and read your mother's diaries again, but really read them this time. Read all the details, everything she wrote - I take it she wrote about when your Dad came back?" Teddy nodded. "Well, read that in detail and try to think objectively. I know, I know, that's a hard thing for me to ask of you, but it's the best idea I can come up with. Read as neutrally as possible, as though they are characters in a book, or something, and then come back and we'll see how you feel."

"I'll...well, I'll try," Teddy nodded. "It's not like I have anything to lose at this point."

"Excellent!" said Harry, patting his godson on the back. "And Ted, seriously, I am here if you ever need to talk about anything.

"I know," he replied. "And thank you for that," he added. "Now, didn't Ginny say something about butterbeer?"

-:-

"Finally! I was beginning to wonder if I'd have to send out a Hit Wizard squad to find you!"

"It's really busy down there," Molly protested. "There were...customers, and things..."

"'Customers and things'," Roxanne repeated dryly, arching one eyebrow. "And David and Melissa and what's-his-face the other one couldn't have handled that themselves? Never mind that now!" she added, as Molly looked as though she might answer this question. "Let's get a move on! Mum and Dad left half an hour ago."

"Oh, I need to change first," Molly said, removing her magenta Wheezes' robes.

"There, you're changed," Roxanne said, once the robes were off her cousin's body. "C'mon, let's go!"

"I meant change out of this!" said Molly, pointing to her blouse and jeans.

"Why? You look fine like that," said Roxanne.

"Well...I thought I might put a dress on," Molly replied, rather vaguely.

Roxanne closed her eyes for a moment, let out a long breath, then reopened them, a cheerful smile on her face. "A dress," she repeated. "Wear the striped yellow one you had on the other day with those gold flip flops down there and my green pashmina. It will look good because I have impeccable taste and am highly skilled at picking out outfits - now, if you don't wear it, it'll look like you're being mean to me. So go and put it on, and quickly!"

"What's the hurry?" Molly asked, blinking as her cousin pushed her bodily into the bedroom.

"Oh, only that I do not wish to be disemboweled by Auntie Ginny for being late," Roxanne said, "And that I'm completely sick of waiting for you! Now get a move on, or I'll just leave you here." The look in her eyes told Molly that she wasn't entirely joking, and so the redhead allowed herself to be pushed into the room.

Ten minutes later, Roxanne strode into the bedroom, an exasperated look on her face. "Did you get lost in the wardrobe? Enter into a staring contest with yourself in the mirror? Forget how to put on a dress?" she asked.

"Sorry, I was just...thinking I might do something with my hair," Molly replied unconvincingly.

"That would be more believable were you not lying on your bed with a pillow covering your face."

"Alright, alright, you found me out," she sighed, removing the pillow that had been muffling her voice. "I don't want to go to the party and see everyone."

"Because of the argument with your Dad?" Roxanne said sympathetically, perching herself on the end of the bed. "I completely understand, but I'll stick by you like glue so you won't be left alone with them. And there's enough people around that you don't have to worry about talking to him if you don't want to - I swear our family grows bigger with every get together we have..."

"It's not that," Molly sat upright. "Dad I can handle - even Mum trying to guilt trip me...which she hasn't been doing, funnily enough, I thought she would, but...sorry, I'm getting sidetracked. I'm not worried about Dad, it's Lucy. We had a fight the other day." It all came out in a jumble of words that didn't quite make sense, but Roxanne waited patiently for her to finish. "...and I'm pretty sure she was the only member of my family-well, immediate family-who didn't hate me, and now I've ruined that!"

"She won't hate you," Roxanne said firmly. "Merlin, you're so melodramatic lately! Go and apologise to her, and she'll forgive you. Anyway, you know Lucy - it's in one ear and out the other with her! She'll probably have forgotten what you said, and you'll have to explain to her why she's mad at you before you can apologise for making her mad."

"Do you really think so?"

"I know so," she said, getting to her feet. "Now can we _please_ floo to Auntie Ginny's this side of Christmas?"

-:-

"Victoire, there you are! Would you like a glass of champagne?"

Victoire looked up with a smile. "Well, if you're offering, I won't say no..." she said to her Auntie Ginny, who waved over two flutes with a flick of her wand. "Thanks!"

"Now just promise me you won't get drunk and run away with any boys," her aunt said, sitting down on the swingset next to her. "Your Dad," she clarified, at Victoire's puzzled look. "He doesn't want any of you three drinking in case you lose your head and run off with some scallywag. But Louis is still at the 'ew, girls!' stage, and I told him he has nothing to fear with you and Dom here, because the only male you're not related to here is Teddy! And I'm sure you've no plans at all to run off with him..." she finished, with an innocent smile.

Almost too innocent, thought Victoire. It was as if she...but no, this was Auntie Ginny! She wouldn't know something like that...or would she?

"Hah, Ted should be so lucky!" she said, careful not to meet her aunt's eye. "And Dad's just being ridiculous."

"He is," agreed her aunt. "And anyway, it's not like he wasn't up to far worse when he was younger than you! I really shouldn't tell you this," she said, lowering her voice and looking around furtively as Victoire leaned closer, "But one time when he was...ooh, just finished his fifth year, so that makes him...what, fifteen, sixteen? Younger than you now. Anyway, he went out with his friends to-"

"Mummy!" A red-haired blur hurtled into Ginny, making the swingset rock rather dangerously.

"What's wrong, love?" Ginny asked, setting a tearful Lily onto her lap.

"The boys are being horrible to me!" the nine year old wailed. "They said that I wasn't allowed to play with them because I'm a girl." Ginny sighed.

"I thought they'd grown out of that," she said, more to herself than her daughter, whose lower lip was now trembling dangerously. "Why don't you go and play with Rosie whilst I go and sort them out, hmm?"

"Rose's talking 'bout Hogwarts with Molly," Lily said. "And I wanted to play Quidditch too!"

"Why don't you play with me?" Victoire said brightly. "We'll all play - me and you and your mum, and I'm sure I've seen Dom and Lucy around here, and Roxanne will play too, and Auntie Angelina... We'll have an all girls game, yeah? No nasty boys allowed?"

"Really?" Lily asked, her eyes growing wide with delight.

"Some boys allowed," Ginny said. "I'll round up George and Ron and Charlie, and Daddy too, if he wants to play," she added to her daughter. "We'll have enough people to have seven on each team, and you can be the captain if you like...Teddy's around here somewhere, I know he'll want to join! And we won't allow James or the others who were mean to you to play, and see how they like it! What do you say?"

"Yay!" squealed Lily bouncing up and down in excitement.

"Honestly, James and Al have been doing my nut in lately," Ginny confined in Victoire. "They've been going on and on about going to Hogwarts and leaving Lily behind, which of course winds her up no end...little blighters. Anyway, this should show 'em - I reckon they'll stop leaving her out of things after this, and I've been looking forward to a nice friendly game for ages."

"Two hippogriffs with one stone then, isn't it?" said Victoire.

"Exactly!" nodded Ginny. "Anyway, Lilykins, get up a moment and I'll go and ask the grown ups what they think. You wait here with Vic, and I'll be back in ten minutes, okay?"

"Okay!" Lily said, bounding off her mother's lap and onto Victoire's where she struck up a steady stream of chatter.

Five minutes later, Victoire's patience was wearing rather thin with her rather hyperactive young cousin. "...and then I told Rose that I was right and she was wrong, and don't you think so too?"

"What? Oh, oh yes," Victoire agreed, wondering where Teddy had got to. She'd barely seen him since she got here...

"What's in your hair? Are these plaits?" Lily chattered.

"Yes, love, they're French braids," she replied. Not that she was looking for Teddy, of course. It would just be nice to see him, maybe ask about his flat...she could offer to help him move in, that would be fun.

"They're really pretty! I wish my hair was pretty like that but Mummy just leaves it down because she says I'm not big enough to stand still long enough for her to do it but I don't move around that much. Does your Mummy say that to you when she does your hair?"

"I do my own hair now," she said, trying to glance over at the house to see if Teddy - or anyone, really - was heading her way. It'd be nice to have someone to come and distract Lily for a moment - surely _she_ hadn't been this talkative and questioning when she was a child?

"Oh right, because you're a grown up? Mummy says that I can do that when I grow up, also what are you drinking?" asked Lily, pointing to the flute of champagne out of which Victoire had barely had the time to take a sip.

"It's champagne, darling," replied Victoire. No, she decided, she definitely had not asked this many questions when she was a child - there was simply not enough time in the day to ask as many as Lily did (though the younger girl seemed to be managing...)

"Can I try some?" Lily asked hopefully.

"Well...you probably won't like it," Victoire said doubtfully. Merlin, where was everyone? Did it make her a bad person that she was semi-considering giving Lily alcohol just to shut her up. "I wasn't a fan when I was younger..."

"But can I please try it?" Lily asked, looking up at her with huge brown eyes. "I might like it, you never know..." Merlin, how could she be so annoying and so cute at the same time?

"Well, I suppose one sip won't hurt you..."

"Urgh!"

She resisted the urge to say 'I told you so', and instead gave a small grin. "I'm sure you'll grow to like it..."

"It's horrible!" Lily declared. "The taste is all in my mouth and I don't like it." She pouted, and Victoire repressed a sigh.

"Have some of that pumpkin juice over there, it'll take the taste out of your mouth," she said, pointing to the jug on the table that Aunt Ginny or someone had probably left.

Lily scrambled over to the juice, and Victoire turned back towards the house. She was too far away to see the people standing in the yard clearly - her eyesight had never been perfect and seemed to be getting worse with age - but one of the slightly blurred figures had a shock of turquoise hair, and so must have been Teddy. She could go and talk to him, if only she could think of something to say. Maybe she could ask him about-

There was a bang, a sound of shattering glass and a scream, and she whirled around, one hand instinctively pulling out her wand. Lily is stood, sobbing, a few feet away from her, the shattered glass of the jug on the lawn before her, and covered from head to foot in green slime, highly reminiscent of the sap of the _Mimbulus Mimbletonia_ plant. "Oh, Lily," she said wearily, and her younger cousin ran towards her.

Gingerly, Victoire put her arms around her, trying not to get any of the foul smelling green liquid on her clothes. "C'mon, Lil, it's alright. It'll only be one of James and Fred and Louis' little jokes, you know what they're like. Let's get you cleaned up, and then I'll go and sort them out for you, yeah?"

Lily nodded, and extracted herself from her cousin's arms. Victoire raised her wand, pointed it at Lily, and said clearly "_Scourgify_." Nothing happened. Victoire frowned, and repeated the spell, but still nothing happened, and the green liquid remained on the little girl. She tried every cleaning spell she could think of, but still the liquid stubbornly refused to come off.

"Is your wand broken?" Lily asked. Victoire flicked it, and a bunch of flowers sprouted from the end. Another flick brought some bluebell coloured flames, a third swish, and a jet of water appeared.

"Apparently not. _Scourgify_!" she cried, pointing her wand at the small stain on her blouse, but it didn't budge. She heard a muffled snort from behind a rhododendron bush, and pounced. Lily followed behind, staring around Victoire at James, Fred and Louis, who doubled up with laughter at the sight of the green stained girls.

"If you three tell me how to remove this, I may_ consider_ not telling all of your parents' about your prank," she said, narrowing her eyes.

"It doesn't come off," James said, and Victoire's mouth fell open in horror. "Not by magic. You need some sort of antidote..."

"But green's definitely your colour, Vic," Fred added. "You look really good like that!"

Victoire raised her wand and the three ducked, but her tickling charm hit them anyway. Whilst they were doubled over on the ground, helpless with laughter, she conjured ropes to tie them together, and levitated them a few inches off the ground. "Come along, Lily," she said, rather imperiously. "Don't you want to see these three get grounded until they're at least thirty-five?"

-:-

"'Course, you'll probably find a lot of what you like is influenced by who's teaching it. Vic raves about History of Magic now she's doing it for N.E.W.T and has, you know, an actual human teaching her, but you'll probably be like me and end up sleeping through most of it, which is a shame, 'cause it would actually be quite interesting if it wasn't taught by a ghost," Lucy said. "But then, there's Herbology, which I'm absolutely _rubbish_ at, but love because Professor Longbottom's so nice."

"Hey."

Both she and Albus, who had been asking her about Hogwarts, looked up at the interruption. Molly was standing before them, holding two slices of cake. "Al, Rose was looking for you? She's in the kitchen, I think..."

Albus got to his feet, waving goodbye to the two girls. Lucy turned away slightly from Molly, as she sat down on the patch of lawn Albus had recently vacated, but accepted the peace offering in the form of cake she was being offered. "Look, I'm sorry for what I said the other day, I really am," Molly said earnestly. "I was wrong and I shouldn't have said what I did."

"You were, but I forgive you," Lucy said lightly. "And anyway, I overreacted a bit," she added magnanimously.

Molly smiled. "Good cake," she said, after a moment, and the two sisters chatted inconsequentially for a while.

"He misses you terribly," Lucy said suddenly, with a nod towards their father.

Molly followed her gaze, to where Percy was chatting and laughing with their Uncle Charlie. "Looks like it," she muttered.

Lucy frowned. "He does! He's always going and standing in your room, and Mum keeps telling him just to give you some time and you'll come round, but he-"

"I don't need time!" Molly replied angrily. "What I need is an apology for having been lied to for all these years!"

"Oh, come off it, Molly," scoffed Lucy. "'Having been lied to' - you're not some kind of martyr, you know! Dad made a mistake years ago and that was that. Everyone else forgave him before we were even _born_, so how can you-"

"But I just...I always wanted to Dad, you know? I couldn't think of anyone I'd rather be in life, and then to find out that he walked out on his family for years, and that everything he's told us about the one thing you must never do is walk out on family...well, it's hypocritical, isn't it?" Molly replied.

"But he came back," Lucy stressed. "That's the point you keep missing! He made a mistake - and yeah, even I can't defend him for leaving them like he did - but _he came back_! And have you not noticed how he always beats himself up about Uncle Fred's death? He clearly still feels guilty about what happened, and what you're doing isn't helping!"

Molly was silent for a long moment, and Lucy thought that she might have finally gotten through to her. "You know, I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree on this one. I can accept that you're not going to make a big deal out of this, if you can accept that I'm not coming back until I've had some kind of explanation - a proper one, I mean," said Molly. "It's nothing against you - or Mum, either. But that's just how it is."

"For what it's worth, I think you're being stupid," Lucy said firmly, but without malice. "But it's your choice to make so...eh. Want to get more cake?"

"Always."

-:-

"Then I dragged them off, Gran, Mum, Auntie Angelina and Ginny all gave them a right rolicking, they've been sent home in disgrace, Uncle George found the antidote to remove the potion and I came up here to clean up," Victoire finished, and Teddy laughed. "Anyway, I'm glad I bumped into you, because Auntie Gin asked me to pick up a cover-up for Lily because she was getting cold but I've completely forgotten which is her room and I don't fancy chancing upon a sulking James...give me a hand?"

"Sure," he replied, leading her down the hallway. "Just through here. I can't believe the terrible trio though - it's a bit... amateur, isn't it? Makes you wonder what they've got up their sleeves next..."

"Oh, God, nothing I hope," Victoire said, shuddering delicately. "Getting covered in green goo was enough for one night. But I completely agree - they've got nothing on what we used to get up to when we were kids?"

"Do you remember that time with the pixies, in Gran's garden?" Teddy asked, and both of them laughed.

"Oh, Merlin, I'd forgotten about that!" Victoire said. "You know, I think the only reason we didn't get into trouble for that was because Mum and Dad and your Gran found it so funny that two kids outfoxed two of the best Aurors in the department. I hope you'll be a better one than Uncle Harry and Ron were then. When is it that you start?"

"First of August, so just over a week from now," he replied promptly. "I can't believe how quick it's come around - doesn't seem five minutes since we were six years old and eating ice cream in the garden at the Burrow, and now I'm heading off to the Ministry and you're taking your N.E.W.T.s...it's mad!"

"Oh, don't!" Victoire cried, closing the wardrobe door. "You sound like Grandma Molly..." He chuckled. "Hey, look, Lily can wear this, can't she?" She held up a Weasley jumper, courtesy of their Grandmother, and Teddy smiled.

"Oh, the Weasley jumpers," he said, "We've had an adventure or two in those!"

"Do you remember the time we thought they were like muggle superhero capes, and had magic powers?" Victoire reminisced.

"Hah, yeah. We didn't take them off til June...God, we must've stunk!" he replied.

"I think Mum used to sneak into my room at night and clean them by magic - I wouldn't let her wash mine in case she reduced its powers," said Victoire, smiling. "Oh, and do you remember the time you were sick all down yours at James' naming ceremony?"

"I still blame the watermelon for that," said Teddy, darkly.

"I noticed you avoiding it today," she said. "Still holding a grudge, are we?"

"Something like that. Hey, do you remember the time when I cut my head open falling off a broom at Ron and Hermione's and you used your jumper to mop up the blood?" he asked.

"Oh yeah! That was back when I wanted to be a Healer...how times change!" she said.

"You managed to help me though - I'd never have got to the house if you hadn't been there," he said seriously.

"You were my partner in crime, I wasn't going to let anything happen to you!" Victoire said, equally serious, but with a twinkle in her eye.

"We were a good team. We still are, aren't we?" He looked at her with some anxiety.

"Of course!" said Victoire immediately. "Though, I think our pranking days are rather behind us now..."

He laughed, before turning serious. "Look, c'mere a sec," he patted Lily's bed, and Victoire sat down on it next to him. "I know I haven't been the nicest I could've been towards you whilst I was at school..."

"You were nice to me!" Victoire said quickly. "We're friends, right? It was natural that we shouldn't be as close as we were - I mean, being in different Houses and different years, and all - but we're still friends even if we didn't...get on all of the time."

"In fairness, I think we only didn't get on when you were dating jerks and I was dating..." he paused, pulling a face.

"Lovely, intellectual girls?" Victoire offered sweetly.

"Something like that," Ted grinned. "But I just wanted to say, I do still...appreciate you. Oh, Merlin, that came out wrong. I sound like Percy!" Victoire giggled. "What I mean is, thank you so much for calming me down and everything the other day. I'm not sure I've said this, but you really, really helped with everything I'm going through, and I'm honestly incredibly grateful for it."

"Is...how are things going, with that? The diary...have you read anymore?" she asked timidly.

"I'm still really angry about it," he said, "but I spoke to Harry today, and he's advised leaving it for a while, then going back when I've calmed down a little. Don't know how much I'm going to calm down, though..." he muttered, more to himself than to Victoire.

She took his hand, and he was surprised by its softness. "If you need anything," she said, looking up into his eyes, "anything at all. I'm here. I'll help you."

"I know," he replied. He tried to think of something more to say, aware of her drawing nearer, and nearer, and the smell of her - so fresh and feminine - and his eyes closed...

Their lips met.

There should have been a part of his brain that said no, that he shouldn't be doing this, that it was _Victoire_ and she was officially _off limits_, but his brain seemed to have shut down. All it was capable of saying was _more!_ and _now!_ and he kissed her back both intensely and softly at the same time.

He wasn't aware of time passing - they could have been kissing for several months (and still it wouldn't be enough...) - but suddenly, she pulled away, and he was, for a moment, only conscious of where she _should_ be (next to him). He noticed the tears in her eyes, threatening to spill over.

"Oh, Merlin, Vic, did I hurt you? I'm so sorry, I didn't-"

"You...you didn't hurt me," she said shakily, grabbing Lily's jumper and straitening her blouse. "It's not you. I...I'm so sorry, I shouldn't have...it's me. I'm sorry. No. It's not you. I'm so sorry!"

She raced out of the room before he can begin to process her nonsense and attempt to stop her.

Victoire kissed him.

No, he kissed her.

Oh, what did it matter? They both kissed each other, and it was incredible. Like no kiss he'd ever had before. And then she'd...gone?

He fell back onto Lily's bed. What in the name of Merlin just happened?

* * *

**A/N: **Thank you so so much to everyone who reviewed - I read and love every single one of my reviews! :) I was very interested to read all your theories on Louis and male Veela-ness. Stromsen in particular raised an interesting point that a Veela dies when a hair is plucked from their head, so Fleur's wandcore must've been a sacrifice...someone should write a fic about that!

I was inspired to finish this today by an article on the Guardian's website, about how it's 15 years since the release of the first HP book. 15 years! Madness! Anyway, you should totally leave me a review in celebration of this anniversary...or leave me one telling me how you plan to celebrate it instead. See what I did there? ;)


	11. A Kiss or two

**Disclaimer:** All credit to the magnificent JKR. Also, I guess a shout-out should go to Bombay Bicycle Club for writing Ivy & Gold, which I had on repeat whilst writing the Ted/Vic section.

* * *

Victoire was an idiot.

She was every single synonym for foolish, idiotic, stupid and daft. Her idiocy was such that it was unlikely she would ever pass her exams, get a job, move out of her parents house, or even, at the rate she was going, retain the ability to dress herself in the morning. She was possibly the stupidest witch ever to have lived. She was certainly the most foolish part-Veela - whoever heard of a Veela who made the mistakes she did?

Kissing Teddy had been a mistake - possibly the biggest mistake she had ever made. She had completely lost all powers of reasoning when he started talking to her in Lily's bedroom on Saturday about how much he appreciated having her as a friend (a friend. A friend! How could she have ignored the operative word in that sentence?), thrown caution to the wind and kissed him.

Naturally, she had done the only reasonable thing she could think of after realising her mistake: she'd run away.

First from Ted, then from the party (she found her father and claimed she was suffering from 'women's troubles', for she knew he would not dare investigate further after hearing that phrase), then from any situation where Teddy might find her. She'd swapped her shift at work so she worked Sunday and not the expected Monday and she'd asked Dominique to babysit in her place for Uncle Ron and Auntie Hermione, on the off chance she should bump into Ted there.

Whilst her avoidance techniques had worked, and she hadn't seen Teddy since The Incident (she felt it needed capitalization), she knew she could not keep them up for the entire holidays. Unless she ran away to France and went to stay with her Grandmere and Grandpere. Or maybe her Tante Gabrielle...

No, she couldn't do this: whilst they'd have been happy to have her stay, her mother would have been suspicious, and she thought that so far, she'd managed to avoid her family's suspicions (despite eating nothing all day on Sunday except a giant bar of Honeydukes' finest) which thankfully negated the chances of any awkward questions being asked.

Well, until they noticed that she wasn't sleeping at night.

And the fact that she was hiding down at the bottom of the garden at Shell Cottage during the day... It was very peaceful down there, though. And listening to the sound of the sea a short distance away was very relaxing... All she needed to do was concentrate on the sound of the waves hitting the edge of the shore, and she wouldn't have to think about Ted, or her idiocy. She breathed in and out to the sound of the waves; big, deep breaths that smelled of salt and home and nature. It was peaceful, like this, and she hadn't felt peaceful in days.

Victoire thought that if she closed her eyes, she might just float away...

-:-

Roxanne had not expected her mother to still be at home on Monday morning, when she rolled out of bed at the pleasantly late hour of eleven thirty. Indeed, she had expected the flat above the shop to be completely deserted - her father and cousin were working in the shop, her brother, too, was supposed to be taking stock in the storeroom as punishment for his misdemeanors at Saturday's party, and her mother was usually well on her way to work as a Quidditch coach in Falmouth by half past eight. But this morning she wasn't: she was sat at the kitchen table. It took her a moment to actually recognise her, for her outfit was so different to the one she normally wore that she half-wondered if there was an impostor sat there, calmly sipping tea.

Angelina Weasley, nee Johnson, had begun playing Quidditch for the Falmouth Falcons almost as soon as she'd left Hogwarts, and after several years, became a coach for the squad, a position she had maintained for much of Roxanne's life. Some of her earliest memories were sitting in the Top Box at the Falmouth ground, watching her mother play Chaser, and later still, sitting with her mother as they watched the Falcons play, her mother's eyes narrowing every time she spotted a flaw in her squad's performance.

Because of this, Roxanne never saw her mother dressed in typical work attire - she usually wore Quidditch robes or simply a pair of jeans and a t-shirt for lounging around the house in. On formal occasions, she would wear a dress robes with a pair of heels, and perhaps an amusing hat of her father's creation, if the mood needed lightning, but she could honestly say she was unaware that her mother owned a suit until now. Angelina was sat very upright in her chair, with a very carefully neutral expression on the half of her face that Roxanne could see. Underneath her plain black suit, she was wearing a maroon blouse, and her braided hair was tied back loosely into a low ponytail.

"Mum?"

She jumped, sloshing tea down her front. Roxanne started forward. "Is everything okay?"

Angelina used her wand to clean up the spilled liquid, affixed a smile on her face and turned towards her daughter. "Everything's fine, love."

"Why are you wearing Muggle clothes?" her daughter asked. "And why-"

"Everything is fine," she repeated, but there was a warning in her voice this time.

"Mum..."

"_Roxanne_."

There was a few moments' silence, as Roxanne stared rather mulishly at her mother, and Angelina frowned down at the kitchen table.

"I had to go somewhere today with some Muggles," Angelina said eventually. "I had to blend in."

"Why? What were you doing with the Muggles, I mean?" asked Roxanne.

Her mother took a deep breath before answering. "Your Grandad - my dad - is a wizard, you know that, but my Mum was a Muggle. She died when I was five - she was killed in a car crash, and I hardly remember her. It was a tragic accident. Dad brought up me and Roxanne - my sister, who you were named for - but he was determined that we still kept in contact with Mum's side of the family. Unfortunately, because of the International Statute of Secrecy and whatnot, he couldn't let them know that we were magic, but we still saw them as often as we could."

"It don't understand what that has to do with-"

Angelina held up a hand. "I'm getting to it," she said, evenly. "Dad used to take us on the train on mine and Roxanne's birthday, and Christmas and Easter to visit Mum's parents and all my cousins and aunts and uncles. There were lots of them - rather like your Weasley cousins. Anyway, Roxanne went to Hogwarts and then I went, two years later, and we saw them much less - just once in the summer and once over Christmas, but it became harder to keep up the act as we grew up. You're completely wiped off the Muggle records once you go to Hogwarts - and Roxanne and I weren't even on them anyway because we weren't muggleborn. We had less and less in common with Mum's family, and it became harder and harder to think of things to talk about. Every part of your life is connected somehow to magic - even something as mundane as how you do the washing up is. It becomes more and more difficult to continue making up excuses, so eventually, you don't."

"You stopped going to see your Grandparents?" Roxanne asked. She was struggling to keep up with the revelations her mother was coming out with - she had known that Angelina had had a sister (Roxanne the Original) who was killed during the war just as her father had had a brother who was killed, and that her Mum's mother had been killed in a tragic accident when her mother was very young. But everything else, including the fact she had muggle relatives, was completely new to her.

"Well, it petered out a bit, especially for me, whilst I was at school," her mother replied. "It was my seventh year when Lord V-Voldemort returned. I believed he'd come back, and so did my sister, but we were in the minority. She wasn't, at first, involved with the Order of the Phoenix - she was an Auror, but the Ministry did not believe in his return. Once it became apparent that he actually was back, however, she joined the resistance movements. She also - though I didn't know it at the time - visited my Grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins regularly to place protective enchantments on their houses, and make sure they hadn't been targeted."

"Were they in a lot of danger, then?" Roxanne asked, her eyes wide.

"Not a huge amount," Angelina allowed. "After all, our family wasn't well-known as anti Death Eater people, like the Weasleys or the Shacklebolts, say, but anyone who fought against him knew the risks, and I think she felt guilty that she'd put them in danger, even if she wasn't very high up in the Order. Anyway, eventually, my sister was...captured by Death Eaters, and killed. And when Dad and I were, you know, sorting through her things, we found out what she'd been doing to protect our Grandparents, and so I went along to see them, to explain."

"Did they know about the spells?" asked Roxanne.

"No, they had no idea she was a witch - or that I was," her mother said. "All they knew was, she'd been dropping by one once or twice a fortnight, then suddenly, that had stopped. And I knew there was no way I could legitimately explain why without giving them the whole details, so I told them."

"About the war?"

"About everything. The war, magic itself, Roxanne's job, Quidditch, what Dad - your Grandad - does for a living...all of it," Angelina said, sighing heavily. "I thought it would make it easier for them if they could understand, you know?" Roxanne nodded. "But it didn't. They blamed magic - especially my Dad and me - for what had happened... I think they thought that we hadn't done enough to protect her, or that maybe she had brought her death on herself, by being involved in the magical community. I offered to take them around Diagon Alley, to explain things further to them, but they told me they didn't want anything to do with it."

"They threw you out?" Roxanne gasped.

"Not exactly, but they said I wasn't welcome in their house if I was doing magic," her mother explained. "They thought that it was Roxanne's involvement with magic that had killed her...which I guess, in a way, it was, but that's a very over-simplistic way of... Anyway, once a year I go to the memorial service they hold for her, but as a Muggle. It's about the only contact we have."

"Why doesn't Dad go with you?" asked Roxanne. "You go to Uncle Fred's memorial service with him..."

"Your father finds it very difficult to be around my grandparents, because of their attitudes towards magic - they think it's evil, and anyone who practises it must be evil, too. He isn't too keen on some of the things they've said to me, over the years," Angelina said carefully. "Eventually, I told him it would be easier all round if he was to let me go alone - sometimes Grandad comes with me, sometimes he doesn't. It's hard for him, too, losing a daughter...and to have to pretend that she died in a car crash, like his wife did, around my mother's family...he finds it difficult."

"Mum, I had no idea everything was...like that," Roxanne said. "I...I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault, my darling," Angelina said, giving a small, but genuine smile. "Families are hard work, even ones who love you." Her daughter reached across the table and took her hand.

"I'll come with you, next year!" she said. "And I'll tell them all the wonderful things about school and magic, and-"

"My love, this isn't something you can fix," said Angelina. "There's no...it's not an argument, as such. There's no apologising or forgiving to be done. Things are just the way they are, and there's nothing we can do about it now - it's been years since everything happened..."

Roxanne squeezed her mother's hand tighter, and said nothing, but frowned down at the kitchen table. What her mother had told her just didn't seem right, and she was determined to see if she couldn't fix things... She'd never met her aunt, but it didn't seem fair to her memory to have half her family determined to hate everything she'd fought for...

-:-

"Victoire? Victoire!"

Someone very far away was calling her name. She opened her eyes slowly. The sun was much higher in the sky than when she'd come down here - she must have fallen asleep without realising (unsurprising, given how little she'd slept last night or the previous night). "Victoire!"

She turned her head to the side, and saw Teddy, his hair her favourite shade of turquoise, looking at her with a mildly exasperated expression on his face. She closed her eyes again. Bloody hell, he was even in her dreams now! _Merlin_.

She opened her eyes again. He was still there. "Vic, are you okay?" he asked, leaning in towards her. So...so this wasn't a dream? She pinched the skin of her arm. Nope, definitely not a dream. She covered her face with her hands and moaned softly. _Why_ did this have to happen to her?

"Victoire!"

She lifted her hands off her face to find Ted's now concerned looking face inches from hers, and screamed in shock. He shot backwards and so did she, scrambling back across the lawn and hitting her head off a low tree branch. "Oww!" Somehow, this wasn't exactly how she'd imagined their first meeting since The Incident would go.

"I...I have to go inside!" she mumbled, face lighting up like a beacon. She jumped to her feet, and he followed her, grabbing her arm to prevent her from escaping.

"No, Vic, wait! Argh!" She turned back at his yell, and found him lying on the ground, having tripped over the uneven groun as he attempted to hold her back.

"Oh, God, Ted, are you alright?"

"Sit down!" he commanded, rolling into a seating position himself, and she was so surprised by his demand that she complied. "Now, I'm going to stay here, and you are going to stay there. We need to sort this out, and it seems that every time we get close to each other, one or other of us ends up injured. So we both won't move, and hopefully we should be fine. Okay?"

"Okay," replied Victoire, because it seemed a less embarrassing option than just running away.

"So," Teddy said, "Let's sort this out." She nodded, wondering how long she could keep up these monosyllabic responses. "You kissed me," he said, after an excruciating pause, where both teens looked everywhere except at each other. She nodded again. Merlin, nothing could be as agonising as this... "You...you kissed me," Teddy tried again. "And I-"

"Look, Ted, I'm just going to say this, because if I don't I'll always wonder what might have been, and Memory Charms have certain legal issues surrounding them that mean I can't just _obliviate_ that kiss from your memory, okay?" Victoire said, tearing up chunks of grass and speaking to her knees, rather than Teddy's face. "Last week, I worked out that I've kind of always liked you," she said, very quickly. "You've always been there, you've always been my friend - basically, everything that you were saying on Saturday. And I kind of...like you. A lot. And so when you were saying that you were really grateful for me being there for you, I misinterpreted it and kissed you. But obviously you don't want to be with me in that way which is fine, and I understand that. But I just thought that I owed you an explanation, and as you clearly don't want to be my boyfriend or anything, can we just forget about it and move on, or all our family gatherings are going to be-"

"Who says I don't want to be your boyfriend?" Teddy demanded, as Victoire looked up in astonishment. "All you were saying - all I was saying - about us just always being with each other and being such good friends - it's true! And I always thought I loved you like a friend, or a brother. I thought it was because you were my best friend and I didn't want to see you get hurt that I didn't like the boys you went out with at school. But you kissed me, and I realised it! I realised that I love you, and that's why I didn't like them. I want to be with you, and it took that kiss to realise it! But I'm so glad I did, because-"

"No," she cut across him, shaking her head.

"No?" he asked, confused.

"Look, Ted, the thing is, I'm part-Veela," she said. "And Veela powers...well, we can make men do stuff. Even me - and I'm only one eighth Veela! If I wanted to, I could turn the head of every bloke in every room I walk into. I'm not boasting, or anything, I'm just saying that when I kissed you, there was probably some Veela things going on that made you think you wanted to be with me, when really, you don't."

"I'm sorry?" he asked. "Are you telling me that I don't know how I feel?"

"Teddy, please, I didn't mean to be rude or make you angry!" she pleaded. Dear Merlin, was he_ trying_ to make this any harder than it was already? "It's just that...I don't fully understand what my powers can do. And I don't want to...to trick you into thinking you like me, when it's really just magic!"

"Victoire Weasley," Teddy said, reaching over and taking one of her hands. She tensed. "Please don't ever say that again. You cannot seriously be telling me that the friendship we've had since your birth - over seventeen years ago, I might add! - is because of your Veela charms? Don't be ridiculous! I think I've always had these feelings for you, but it wasn't until you kissed me that I understood what they really are..."

"Ted," she replied, her voice cracking slightly. "That's sweet of you to say, but...I was in a relationship with a guy for nearly a year, and he told me that he loved me for me and that I was wonderful and marvellous and would be even if I was the ugliest person in the world and blah blah blah. And then I heard him talking to his friends about how he was only with me because I'm really hot and he gets to say that he's been with a Veela, and when I confronted him about what I'd heard, all he said was that it was true, and that the Veela thing was most of the attraction for him! And I just...it doesn't matter how much you say it isn't, there's always going to be a part of me that wonders if you're with me because of what I am."

"You're not the only one with unusual powers, you know," he said, and she squinted at him, confused. "I can change my appearance so that I'm the most attractive guy you've ever laid eyes on," he elaborated. "I could ask you what eye colour, hair colour, height, whatever you find most attractive in a guy and make myself into that. But would that make you like me any more? Of course not! I'd still be the same guy, just as I would be if I morphed myself into...I don't know, some old, balding fat bloke with a hairy nose!"

Despite herself, she gave a small snort of laughter.

"What I'm saying is, appearances matter, of course they do. But deep down, that has nothing to do with love. We've known each other since birth - I know exactly what you're like. I know you almost better than you do! And I know that my liking you has nothing to do with you being a Veela," he said earnestly. "Look," he added, a teasing lilt to his voice. "You like me, I like you, we've known each other for years...this shouldn't be difficult."

"You're right," she said. "But..."

"But you've just come out of a relationship where your ex was a jerk to you and rushing into a new relationship isn't a good idea?" he asked. "I understand...but we don't have to rush into things. We can take it slow, and we don't have to tell anyone what we're up to. No pressure, or anything."

Victoire gave a shy smile. "I think that sounds like quite a good idea," she said, looking up at him. "If-if you want to, of course," she added hurriedly.

"Oh, I do," he replied, and her smile grew wider. "I...should we shake on it, or something?"

"I have a better idea," she said, with a wink.

Some time later, they drew apart, and Teddy rested his chin on the top of her head. "I think that we may have just made an excellent decision," he said, faux-seriously, and she laughed.

"I think you may be right," Victoire said, mimicking his tone and snuggling into his chest. "So...we're together now?"

"We are together," Teddy said. "But we'll just take it slowly and see how things progress, and if it's too weird and we don't like the way things are, we can split with no hard feelings, yeah?"

"That sounds like a plan," she murmured. "And no telling our family just yet?"

"Merlin no, they're terrible gossips!" Teddy said, and she gave a small snort of laughter before kissing him again.

Suddenly, Teddy became aware of a strange noise, and looked up, towards Shell Cottage, where he could see strange sparks circling around the windows of the top floor. "Vic..." he said slowly.

"Hmm?" she replied, looking upwards.

"I'm not trying to imply that you're bad at this whole kissing thing, but surely...well, there shouldn't be literal fireworks, should there?" She followed his gaze, frowning when she saw the sparks.

"Oh, crap!" cried Teddy, lurching upwards.

"What is it?" she asked, alarmed.

"I wanted an excuse to come and see you, to sort things out, you know? Well, I went round to see Harry and Ginny and I offered to apparate James round here, to see Louis, to give me an excuse to see you. You know he's supposed to be grounded because of Saturday? But anyway, I thought it-"

"Basically, you left the two of them up there unsupervised? Merlin, when will you learn?" Victoire sighed.

"We should probably go and..." he waved a hand towards the house, wincing at the thought of what the two boys might be up to.

"See if the house is still in once piece?" she finished, after a particularly loud explosion made them both wince. "Good idea..."

-:-

Richard really was quite a good kisser, Dominique thought, as they lay on the sofa together. And he was quite the gentleman, always holding doors open for her and checking that she was okay with what he was doing. _And_ he was good looking, too. Not that that really mattered, or anything, it was just a nice extra bonus, given that she was thinking of asking him to be her boyfriend.

He was definitely boyfriend material. He was a Ravenclaw, so he was clearly clever, and he liked Quidditch. They looked good together, both being tall and blonde. He was a bit...boring, though. They didn't really have much to say to each other. Not that it mattered that much - he could take her to Hogsmeade and Quidditch matches on dates, and kiss her underneath the mistletoe at Christmastime; there didn't necessairily need to be much talking involved in their relationship. And he was a good kisser. Not that she had much to compare him too, but she supposed that if he was bad at the whole kissing thing, she would know about it... He seemed to think she was good at kissing, at least, if the amount of time he'd spent with his lips glued to hers was anything to go by...

Was she supposed to be thinking about this so much? Was she supposed be thinking at all whilst she was kissing him? Maybe she should try not to-

A sudden sound from the kitchen alerted her to the fact that her mother must have returned, and she pulled away from Richard, who sat up in alarm. "Sorry, did I hurt you or anything?"

"No, no, I'm fine," Dominique said quickly. "My Mum's home, that's all. She probably shouldn't catch us being all..." she waved her hands around vaugely.

"Oh, right. Yeah," replied Richard. They both sat next to each other, but staring straight ahead - when Dominique looked sideways at him, she noticed he was more concerned with straightening out the wrinkles in his shirt than anything else, and she felt a little disappointed. Surely it wasn't a good sign if he couldn't even make eye contact with her? But then, maybe he was just nervous about her parents being home... "What time is it?" he asked suddenly.

Dominique looked at the clock behind her. "Almost five," she replied.

"My Dad'll be here to pick me up soon - I gave him your address so he could come and Side-Along me home, if that's okay?" Richard asked, looking at a point just over Dominique's left shoulder.

"Yeah, that's fine," Dominique replied. "We can go and wait for him in the kitchen if you want? You can meet my Mum, she'd like to meet you..." She fidgeted awkwardly.

"Yeah, that'd be nice," Richard said. They both got to their feet. "I...today was really, um, nice."

"It was!" said Dominique. "We should do it again sometime."

"That would be nice," he nodded, and she resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Did he seriously not know any word other than 'nice'? Weren't Ravenclaws supposed to be clever?

He followed her into the kitchen and introduced him to her mother, which could, she reflected, have gone a lot worse. Yes, he did use the word 'nice' a further three times inside five minutes, but he did make polite conversation with Fleur (who mercifully didn't do anything too embarrassing), and so she thought she was quite lucky, really. She thought she might ask him to be her boyfriend after they'd gone on another date - he'd mentioned taking her out to Diagon Alley, so she'd wait for him to ask her on the date officially - as he was really quite sweet. She could always work on his vocabulary once she was dating him...

There was a loud crack of someone apparating, and Richard broke off from telling Fleur about how nice France was, the one time he'd been on holiday there. "That'll be my Dad," he said.

"I'll shall go and get zhe door," Fleur said, leaving the kitchen and giving her daughter a smile behind Richard's back. "He's nice," she mouthed, and Dominique tried not to blush.

"So...today was fun," said Richard, smiling shyly over at her. "Maybe we could go to Diagon Alley together next week?"

"That would be nice," Dominique replied, before wincing inwardly. That word again...

"Good," grinned Richard. "I'll write to you...or, do you have a telephone?"

Dominique shook her head - not having taken Muggle Studies, she wasn't even entirely sure what a telephone was. "I thought you wouldn't - most magic families don't. But my Mum's a Muggle, so... Anyway, yeah, I'll write," he concluded.

They exchanged a rather awkward, one-armed hug, and then Dominique led him out into the hallway, where her mother was...glaring at Richard's father, her lips pressed into a thin line? That couldn't be right, could it? His father - she didn't know his name - looked rather embarrassed, and Dominique cringed, wondering what her mother had said to upset him. Final goodbyes were said rather hurriedly - Richard had also noticed their parents' strange behaviour, sending Dominique a mystified shrug as they left.

Dominique waited until her mother had closed the front door before rounding on her, intending to demand an explanation for what had happened, but before she could say anything, her mother opened her mouth, her expression icy. "Zhat boy, what ees 'is name?"

"I-what? Richard, Richard Davies. Why?" she asked.

A look of grim satisfaction spread across her mother's face. "I zhought so," she said. "You are not too see 'im again."

"What?" cried Dominique, anger rising inside her.

"You must not see 'im again," repeated Fleur. "I forbid eet."

"You can't!" her daughter said, sounding outraged.

"Whilst you are living under zhis roof, you will obey our rules," Fleur snapped. "And you are not to see Richard again."

"Why?" cried Dominique. "You just told me he was nice!" A few moments ago, she would have willingly admitted that, whilst Richard was, well, _nice_, he wasn't the world's most interesting person and even though he was quite sweet, she still wasn't one hundred percent sure she wanted to be with him. But now that her mother had said this...well, he suddenly seemed like the best person in the world, and who was her mother to forbid her from seeing him? Fleur clearly didn't understand how wonderful Richard was...

"Zhat was before I knew 'oo 'is father was!" Fleur said, cutting across her daughter's protests. "I forbid you to see 'im again! 'Is family...they are not to be trusted."

Dominique could tell by the look on her mother's face that she wasn't going to get anywhere demanding or pleading with her mother to change her mind. Her jaw set in a manner that looked remarkably like her father, she whirled around, away from her mother. "Fine! Just ruin my life, why don't you!" she snarled, stomping loudly up two flights of stairs and slamming her bedroom door shut with gusto.

"What in the name of Merlin's most baggy y-fronts was _that_ all about?" Bill asked, having floo'd into the kitchen in time to hear the end of the exchange.

Fleur sighed. This was going to take a lot of explaining...

* * *

**A/N:** In answer to the question I know I'm going to be asked otherwise: no, this is not the end of Teddy/Victoire - there's still plenty more of them to come :) This is not the most exciting chapter ever, but I wanted to get it out there because it sets up a lot of the things that are going to happen later.

Once again, massive thanks go to everyone who reviewed, alerted and favourited, but special thanks to those who have let me know what they think. If you have alerted or favourited this...please leave me a review and tell me why? I'd love to hear from you, and the review box is so enormous now you could fall into it if you're not careful, so you've no excuse! If you can't think of anything else to say (or even if you can!), let me know your favourite next gen character, and why :)


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